Tag: short-form video

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Google’s Area 120 launches Tangi, a short-form video app focused on creativity and DIY

The latest project to emerge from Google’s in-house incubator, Area 120, takes the newfound interest in short-form video and focuses it on the DIY space. The company today is launching a short video platform called Tangi, initially on the web and iOS, that allows creative types to share how-to videos on subjects like crafting, painting, cooking, fashion, beauty and more.

Unlike apps like TikTok or newly-launched Byte, which are more focused on entertainment, Tangi aims to help people learn.

“We only focus on DIY and creativity content,” explains Tangi founder, Coco Mao. “Our platform’s goal is to help people learn to craft, cook, and create with quick one-minute videos. We designed Tangi to make it easier for users to find a lot of high-quality how-to videos,” she says.

Mao was inspired to create Tangi after going home to visit her parents in Shanghai. She found they were watching a lot of how-to videos on painting and photography on their phone, even though she had always believed they were “smartphone challenged.”

“My mom has always had a creative side, and I was surprised to learn that she’s now an amateur oil painter thanks to these niche communities with quick how-to videos,” Mao says. “I, too, joined some of these vibrant creative communities that make videos around cooking and fashion. I noticed something magical in these videos: They could quickly get a point across—something that used to take a long time to learn with just text and images,” she notes.

While Tangi’s vertical videos can be up to one-minute long, most average around 45 seconds. That means it’s not necessarily the place to be walked step-by-step through a complicated recipe as you could be on YouTube, for example. Instead, the videos might show you a quick cooking trick or inspire you to try a new idea in the kitchen.

Another difference between Tangi and other short-form video apps is a feature it includes called “Try It.” This encourages users to upload photos of their re-creation of the video as a way to interact with other community members, says Mao.

For example, one of the most re-created videos is this one of making guacamole in the avocado shell.

The creator might leave an actual recipe in the comments, however, even if they don’t show you each individual step in detail. (And it’s arguably a lot easier to follow a recipe on Tangi than on most of today’s recipe sites which are overrun with ads and SEO-driven “personal stories.”)

Already, Tangi is being used by a number of creators including DIY and lifestyle blogger Holly Grace, portrait artist Rachel Faye Carter, baker and food creator Paola D Yee, beauty vlogger Sew Wigged Out, art and DIYer TheArtGe, cooking and DIYer JonathanBlogs, and others.

Also unlike other social video apps, uploading to Tangi isn’t currently open to all. Instead, creators need to apply to be a part of the video platform. This allows Tangi to ensure their videos remain focused on creativity and DIY activities.

As a viewer, you can search Tangi for whatever it is you want to learn or filter videos by category, like art, cooking, DIY, fashion & beauty, and lifestyle. Or you can simply scroll down the home page until something catches your interest. To save a video or show your support for the creator, you click the heart icon to like the video. This saves it to your “Liked” section under your profile.

Tangi ends up having a sort of Pinterest-y vibe due to its content.

At launch, Tangi is available everywhere except the E.U., initially on the web and on iOS. The app is a free download, is ad-free, and isn’t currently being monetized in other ways.

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Jeffrey Katzenberg’s streaming service Quibi books $100M in ad sales ahead of launch

Quibi, the short-form video platform founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, hasn’t even launched but has already booked $100 million in advertising sales, according to a report from The WSJ this morning. The company, which aims to cater to younger viewers with premium content chopped up into “quick bites,” says it has already booked advertisers including Protector & Gamble, Pepsi Co., Anheuser-Busch InBev, Walmart, Progressive, and Google.

It still has around $50 million in unsold ad inventory ahead of launch.

It’s hard to imagine how a service like Quibi will compete in a market dominated by paid streamers like Netflix and free services like YouTube — both preferred by a younger demographic. But Quibi has been raising massive amounts of money to take them on. In May, it was reported that Quibi was going after another billion in funding, on top of the billion it had already raised.

Beyond the industry’s big bet on Katzenberg himself, Quibi has booked big-name talent including Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro, and is filming a show about Snapchat’s founding which may draw in millennial viewers.

But it sounds like Quibi may also be relying on gimmicks — like Spielberg’s horror series that you can only watch at night time (when it’s dark outside). Not to mention the very idea that Quibi thinks it’s invented a new kind of media that falls in between today’s short-form and traditional TV-length or movie-length content found elsewhere.

On Quibi, shows are meant to be watched on the go, through segments that are around 7 to 10 minutes long. Some of the content will be bigger, more premium productions, while others will be more akin to what you’d find on cable TV or lower-cost daily news programming.

The service will launch April 6, 2020 with two tiers: a $4.99 per month plan that includes a pre-roll ad before each video segment. The ad is 10 seconds if the video is under 5 minutes, and it’s 15 seconds for any videos between 5 and 10 minutes. Some ad themselves will tell “brand stories” throughout the program breaks.

A $7.99 per month tier offers an ad-free experience. The company expects 75% of viewers will opt for the ad-supported version, Quibi CEO Meg Whitman told The WSJ.

 

 

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Mary Meeker’s 2019 Internet Trends report highlights China’s short-form videos and super apps

This year’s edition of Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report, released earlier today, once again included a section on China prepared by Hillhouse Capital. There are now 3.8 billion Internet users globally, more than half of the world’s population, but growth is slowing (as demonstrated by declining smartphone shipments). Internet leaders in China can continue helping companies in other countries find ways to engage their users, the way WeChat launched features, including mini-programs and e-commerce, that are now ubiquitous in messaging and social media apps around the world.

China has the most internet users in the world, about 800,000,000 or 21% of the world’s total internet users (it is followed by India, the United States and Indonesia). Chinese companies took seven of the top 30 spots for internet market cap leaders: Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan Dianping, JD.com, Baidu, NetEase and Xiaomi—stable, just one less than one year.

Mobile Internet users in China grew 9% year-over-year in 2018 to 817 million, while mobile data usage increased 189% year-over-year, faster than 2017’s 162% growth. While data volume share (or new data captured, generated and replicated by region) is falling in the U.S., it is rising in China, second in growth only to EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa).

In particular, this year’s report highlighted short-form videos as a key driver of Internet usage growth in China, leading user and usage growth across all app categories. Users spent a total of nearly 600 million hours per day watching short-form videos on mobile in April 2019, more than in any other category. Short-form video leaders included Douyin (known as Tik Tok in international markets), Kuaishou and Haokan.

Another major video trend is live-streaming, especially for e-commerce platforms. Taobao got more than $14 billion GMV through live-streaming in 2018, while fashion e-commerce and social media platform Mogu attributed 24% of its GMV to live-streaming, which also had a four times repeat purchase rate.

While WeChat’s mini-programs have already influenced other apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Kakao and Line, there is still plenty to learn from them. For example, the role they play as CRMs for many Chinese retailers: many brands send information about sales and other promotions by public accounts on WeChat or send red packets for discounts to group chats to drive engagement.

The rise of the “super app”

Meituan Dianping’s “super app” is growing increasingly huge. It now includes more than 30 services (for example, restaurant reviews, reservations, movie tickets, home rentals, hotel bookings, payments, travel booking, food delivery and grocery ordering), although restaurant-related services and travel make up as much as 88% of its revenue. The company’s annual transacting users grew 26% year-over-year to 412 million.

Alipay has also evolved from a payments app to hosting more than 200,000 mini-programs, including ones that enable users to manage their healthcare, investments, invoices, car payments and insurance. Alipay now counts more than one billion users, 70% of whom use at least three financial services in the app.

The influence of these “super apps” can be seen outside of China in apps like Grab, Rappi and Uber, which are adding more services (for example, Uber’s app now lets you order food, reserve e-bikes and find promotions at other businesses).

From offline to online 

Another trend that may make its way to other countries is the wide variety of business models used by grocery delivery apps in China. In the U.S., most grocery delivery apps take one of two approaches, either partnering with retailers and delivering groceries from their brick-and-mortar stores to users (like Instacart) or delivering from their own stores or warehouses, like Amazon Prime Now and Whole Foods.

In China, on the other hand, grocery delivery apps are divided into four business models. Some, like Alibaba’s Freshippo (Hema) and JD.com’s 7 Fresh, own, operate and offer delivery or pickup from their own stores, while others like Miss Fresh and Dindong Maicai, deliver from their own warehouses, using their own fulfillment systems. A third group, including Xingsheng Youxuan, Songshu Pinpin and Dailubo, works with local franchised partners and allows users to order or make group purchases in WeChat mini-programs for next-day delivery or pick up. The fourth group offers quick deliveries from retail partners and includes big companies like Meituan, Alibaba’s Ele.me and Taoxianda, and JD.

Riding the same offline-to-online wave, educators are digitizing classes that were traditionally taught in person. Online tutoring has hit the mainstream as K-12 students embrace homework apps to get afterschool help. Similarly, parents sign their younger children (ages 3-10) up for English and coding classes hosted on smartphones.

The Chinese government has also gone digital and is increasingly offering public services through in-house apps and third-party super apps such as WeChat and Alipay. The list of tasks that citizens can complete on their phones includes applying for visas, paying utility bills, virtually queuing up at hospitals, renewing a driver’s license, and many more that can save people the hassle of hopping from one government office to another.