"The current T-Tok is Taobao in 2003, WeChat in 2011, and D in 2016."

A widely circulated phrase in the industry has become an important factor in driving many people to enter T-Tok.

Domestic players have witnessed a new wave of short video and live broadcasting, iterated traditional media forms, and created a large number of industry "myths". When the domestic market gradually entered the stock era, they naturally set their sights on T-Tok, which has not yet been "reclaimed", which has 1 billion monthly activities worldwide and traffic dividends that have not yet been dissipated.

D sound is in the same series as T-Tok, and can the successful experience of D sound be directly copied to T-Tok?

This is a mode in which many players are either watching or testing the waters.

We chatted with a number of T-Tok players to find out if one-to-one gameplay replication is a "dimensionality reduction strike" or a "water and soil failure"

1. From carrying to original, feeling the stone of D sound across the river of T-Tok

The easiest and roughest way to enter T-Tok is to carry the video.

In 2020, T-Tok launched a creation fund to reward creators based on the number of views and the value of fans. According to a porter who shared, if the account has more American fans, the unit price will be higher, 1 million plays have 10-30 US dollars, and a video playing 12.5 million yuan has 153 US dollars (about 1000 yuan).

And this handling process, for them, is almost zero threshold, even if they don't know English, it doesn't matter, the only cost to pay is the cost of time.

There are also tips for handling, an account that shares handling experience on T-Tok revealed that it is best to move faceless, less Chinese description, and not much voice, or directly carry explosive videos.

However, this pure handling mode soon came under various limitations.

From the experience of multiple players, first, the platform will determine whether the account is a real account in the region, which is directly related to whether the creation fund can be opened; Second, T-Tok will detect and check video copy and content.

T-Tok also clearly states in its intellectual property policy that "any content that infringes copyrights is not allowed", and once found to be violating, it can range from limiting streaming, deleting videos, or banning accounts.

The road is one foot high, and the magic is one foot high. Some players revealed that it is difficult to be recognized and judged by the system after the video is cut and created, "it is best to cut some representative shots, and then add some other content pictures, and you can also do some speed adjustment and mirror actions", but this practice of brushing the edge ball is also facing high risks.

Today, handling has evolved to the emergence of specialized software for automated handling.

According to Ebang Power, the iteration of technology has been able to achieve 1,000 videos a day, manage thousands of accounts at a time, and upload videos automatically 24 hours a day. Of course, there is also a corresponding monetary cost behind this technology.

For some players, rubbing the edge and gray production may not be conducive to the subsequent long-term monetization, but pure manual operation cannot play these machineized equipment, so groping for original content becomes the next direction.

From the distribution of the top 100 accounts of T-Tok popularity that we previously counted, appearance, stars, and funny are the three most popular areas of T-Tok, followed by content types such as plot, fashion, singing and dancing, and food, which are very close to the distribution of popular tracks of D sound.

This means that the content operation ideas of an original account are also the same as D sound, such as how to start the number, raise the number, create a character, how to create a script suitable for the account, and from which data dimensions the algorithm evaluates the recommended video into the next traffic pool.

Uncle Le does T-Tok in Vietnam MCN institutions, after signing the first batch of Internet celebrities, began to do content creation in the direction of funny and plot, initially adapted from domestic explosive content, and then filmed and released after localized adjustments.

The theme of the first million-hit video was a funny skit between girls in a shared apartment, which also caused a parody remake by the Vietnamese at the time. After gradually mastering the rhythm, Uncle Li led the team to do more localized content innovations, such as making micro-short dramas with continuous plots, and doing targeted creation in line with the characteristics of Vietnamese people who love to watch real content.

Uncle Li also mentioned that T-Tok does not currently have clear category support and guidance from the official like D in content, "The customs and laws and regulations of various countries are different, each country operates independently, and it is not as systematic as in China."

"Localization" is a point that teams like Li who create content on T-Tok specifically mention. In order to really attract overseas local audiences, you must first understand the preferences, habits and taboos of local people, and many memes that domestic audiences love to watch may not necessarily resonate overseas.

"Sometimes the video content is similar, but the copywriting is replaced by the kind of slang that locals like, or with a little meme, and you may be able to run at once", this is the experience of a practitioner who has been groping at T-Tok for 3 years.

However, T-Tok, which has not yet formed a mature content ecology, can only provide a direction even if there is a sample of D sound, and how to do it still depends on each other's talents.

2. Without the T-Tok version of "Li Jiaqi", is the "routine" of live streaming goods universal?

Making content is the first step for players to accumulate fans, and the ultimate goal is monetization.

Similar to D sound, T-Tok has gradually moved towards a closed loop of goods after gaining huge traffic through short videos.

But can the "OMG, buy it!" that makes Chinese netizens order crazy can tug at the heartstrings of foreign friends?

Mr. X, the founder of an institution that has been engaged in cross-border e-commerce for more than ten years, gave a negative answer.

On the one hand, the online shopping consumption habits of domestic and foreign users are different, and the user mentality of T-Tok live streaming has not yet been fully cultivated.

Mr. X revealed that they used independent websites to do cross-border e-commerce in the early days, placing information flow ads on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to attract traffic to their own websites to sell goods, before the T-Tok closed e-commerce loop was opened. This "old method" has also allowed a large number of merchants to make "gold". Because foreign users have the habit of buying things on independent websites, such as buying Nike and going to Nike's official website, this is not the case in China.

Before there was Taobao in 2016, and then there was D tone K hand in 2019, the giant spent several years of time and resources to educate the market, and users gradually developed the habit of selling things in the live broadcast room, and gradually thought that it was a normal thing to wait for the anchor to open the link.

"Foreign countries have not even developed the mentality of buying things in an entertainment software, let alone those routines that hold back orders can work, this market education can not be completed in the short term," Mr. X said.

On the other hand, live streaming requires anchors to "take the lead", and T-Tok has not yet had a national-level super cargo anchor.

In the shelf e-commerce period, users trust the platform more, and in the live e-commerce period, the user's trust is gradually transferred to the anchor. Whether T-Tok can "hold" its own ace anchor has become the key to the success of live streaming e-commerce.

It has been observed that in the current T-Tok ecosystem, although there is no lack of influencers with high fans and beautiful single-session report cards, there has not yet been a cargo anchor who can compete with the "four kings" of domestic live streaming and have national popularity.

Joanna, a T-Tok streamer in Chengdu, said the foreigners she met were not very enthusiastic about being an anchor because it was easier and more lucrative to be an English teacher in China.

Domestic anchors get up early and are greedy for darkness, and even take turns on duty to do the "sun does not set" live broadcast room, but this "involution" method does not work here in foreigners. A number of practitioners revealed that foreign anchors basically only broadcast for two hours per session, and they are all "flat broadcasts".

Even if he believes that T-Tok cannot replicate the brilliance of D sound in the short term, Mr. X still devotes 10% of the resources to T-Tok.

After testing, Mr. X found that T-Tok's algorithm recommendation was not as accurate as D sound, which is the key to whether interest e-commerce can intercept shelf e-commerce traffic.

"Traffic is really big, but conversion is also really bad. Because T-Tok is still a very young software, the data in all aspects is not enough to feed the algorithm, for example, T-Tok knows that a user of the male label likes beautiful women, but it is not more specific, but Facebook can accurately recommend blonde and blue-eyed beauty that users like. "

First enter the game to eat meat, then enter the game to drink soup. It is precisely because the T-Tok e-commerce closed loop has not yet fully developed that many players see the opportunity.

Mr. Wu, founder of Yonei Media, believes that if T-Tok is already mature, small and medium-sized enterprises have little chance. As one of the service providers of D sound e-commerce, they touched the stones laid by domestic e-commerce, came to the river of T-Tok, and became one of the official service providers of T-Tok.

"I haven't done cross-border e-commerce before, I started directly from D e-commerce and witnessed the rise of content e-commerce in two years. T-Tok is like Amazon 7 years ago, Taobao 5 years ago, and D tone 2 years ago. The logistics, finance, delivery and gameplay of domestic live streaming e-commerce are leading in the world, and we hope to replicate this set of methods overseas. For regions such as Europe, North America and Southeast Asia, it needs to be adjusted according to language and culture, policies, regulations, and tax laws. "

Although "routines" such as holding orders cannot be copied for the time being, human nature and algorithms are the same, such as opening stones, selling jewelry to the mirror and live packaging and other gameplay, which has emerged on T-Tok.

Copying domestic words and gameplay "according to local conditions" is to some extent a "dimensionality reduction blow" to the foreign live streaming market.

T-Tok service provider Colin told us that T-Tok and D tone are based on algorithms to recommend content for users, so using this mature set of domestic operation logic to label the live broadcast room is twice as effective with half the effort.

For example, selling jewelry, replacing "hello" with "sisters", thereby increasing the proportion of female fans, repeating key information points that are cheaper than counters, etc., these methods can help accounts lock target users faster and improve the efficiency of starting numbers.

It was a great challenge to replicate the language of each region and translate it into the past.

In Uncle Li's view, most of the foreign live broadcast rooms have not yet formed the so-called "speech technique", and the domestic Chinese speech technique is very strange if it is directly translated, for example, he once wanted to use "×× Yanxuan" to name an account, but took various translated versions to show Vietnamese locals, and the other party felt that this statement was very strange.

Despite the difficulties of one-to-one "copying", Uncle Li still believes that learning live in D is the most effective method.

He recently adjusted a Vietnamese T-Tok beauty delivery account according to the appearance of the domestic live broadcast room, such as increasing the large screen to reduce the number of times the anchor bows his head, enhancing the interaction between the anchor and the user, not explaining the product dryly but experiencing more trials, just after doing these basic operations, the account's GMV tripled to $40,000 in a single month.

We talked to more than ten T-Tok practitioners, and from the feedback of most of them, the thinking mode of account operation and live broadcast is common, but only by making localized adjustments according to local conditions can we truly enter the local market.

In other words, the operation experience of D tone can be referenced, which is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to enter T-Tok, but it is not recommended to copy it directly. And for players who have no experience in D sound operation, starting from 0 will not necessarily lag behind others.

T-Tok is still a rapidly evolving platform.

According to late reports, T-Tok e-commerce's GMV in the first half of 2022 has exceeded $1 billion, which is not only comparable to its volume in 2021, but also completed half of its 2022 full-year transaction volume target.

The T-Tok e-commerce team also set a goal of reaching US$23 billion in 2023 and US$470 billion (nearly 3 trillion yuan) within five years. From these numbers, it is enough to see T-Tok's ambitions.

When the wind comes, they will not greet anyone, and the T-Tok forerunners have begun to "wait for the wind to come" in the savage growth.

    

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