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Short videos 短视频 （short form content on Wikipedia) are getting popular nowadays.
I have some reservations on the shorts, YT shorts or anything equivalent. Below is not a complete list but let me try list some of the popular shorts platforms. My main reservations are the short durations of videos, their impact on kids’ focuses, and the relatively short time span of short videos in the internet and social media history.
YT Shorts: I know my younger daughter only watches the YT shorts when she gets my phone 🙂
Douyin 抖音 (since Sept 2026): I don’t have account for now. But I did watch two short videos today. Also, this series (or playlist) looks/sounds good to me at least 🙂
For douyin we have to have a China based mobile phone and Chinese ID. In other words the app is not open to foreigners or to outside world. ByteDance’s TikTok serves that market.
Btw, here is a famous account 与辉同行
Also a drumset performance (song: 搀扶, MV here)
The songs I listened to when I was young (from 1980s to 2006).
Two videos from Toutiao.com (also owned by ByteDance, the parent co of Douyin): 这老师火到人民日报了！高考誓师大会上，数学老师祝福语
and 大美中国走进广东惠州，山海秀美，惠州人看看！
Buiness model of Douyin (to be expanded)
抖音会员是什么 (Also, Zhihu)
This also makes me to think – maybe TikTok and Douyin 抖音 got popular for a legit reason? 抖音和TT在短视频领域称霸是否意味着字节跳动有她的独到之处呢？就像最近的DeepSeek 对ChatGPT 的冲击和影响？一般一开始先是deny, 接下去说她们肯定是抄了我们的作业，最后发现不对啊，我们可能需要抄她们的作业？😂 Because their presentation or their content or their engagement are better than competitors (say, YT Shorts, and FB Reels)?
Also the 2025 graduation festival: this has been a thing since 2000, and I recall Bilibili was the early leader.
TikTok: I didn’t use it much. But I am aware that it’s widely popular among young people, and it may have taken a dip recently in the USA due to the recent law barring the app. But again whatever ByteDance (Douyin and TikTik) was doing seems working very well with the young people across the world. And for that I think as a minimum we should acknowledge their success: I understand sometimes it’s harder for people outside of China to acknowledge that Chinese people or engineers did something really impressive. If we can do that, we can follow up with some more helpful or meaningful questions such as why are they successful? What can we learn from them, and so on.
WeChat (short videos) 微信视频特指短视频: I don’t watch much of it honestly, especially recently – besides I watch a few music videos there 🙂 One reason I watched music is to stay away from politics. As some of you may know, I am not a fan of the current resident of the WH in the USA. From WeChat I saw content creators can also create playlist. Personally I haven’t found a way to share the link for the 合集 yet, note I don’t have a 微信公众号或者视频号.
Bilibili: they have both short videos and long videos. I am not fully converted to 弹幕 yet though 🙂 (Update) I finally moved up to level 2 there, after answering 60 questions (mostly are simple questions). I tried to verify myself as HUST alumni, but I failed 🙁
Here is one example of Bilibili video. Now I also recall the difference between Bilibili and Douyin: the former is a bit smaller in terms of scale, and also, they cater to the young and educated folks, while Douyin is for everyone. They have a playlist or 合集/视频选集 feature too, here is an example.
Also: I just uploaded my 1st video.
(06/04/25) I found a tip to not see the 弹幕 , just pop up the video in the bilibili app.
(06-11-25) Just learned sometimes the platform has exclusivity agreement with creator.
RedNote: or XiaoHongShu. It got a pop recent amid the TikTok ban. The bump or pop probably faded away. But the platform itself is quite popular among Chinese users and has quite good engagement from my observations. RedNote can create a playlist #合集 too. Here is one example Ayen何璟昕国粤双语合集. Note: it’s best to open this in the app. I noticed on my Mac it will automatically download the Android apk file for RedNote app. Or you may go to the xiaohongshu website and I am not sure if the same functionality exists on the website.
From consumer point of view, I think consume in moderation is the key. But from creator point of view, short video and playlist or 合集 in Chinese is a great way to generate interest.
Business model or income
I speculate one reason artists or creators do short video instead of longer or full length videos is due to copyright laws. I am not attorney but I guess a 20 or 30 seconds clip is less likely to cause issues for the copyright owners than the full length version.
This is more from the content creators or advertisers’ point of view.
YouTube油管和抖音有哪些差别？｜Weitube
一个50万粉丝抖音博主能赚多少钱，涛哥爱拆机真实收入全面公开#抖音创作者 #涛哥爱拆机
今天是庆祝我粉丝到50万的福利视频！回答一些你们常问我的问题，感谢每一个菜鸡粉丝的支持和陪伴！#这个视频有点料
PS: I will probably translate this post to Chinese, or rewrite a new one in Chinese.
