What is the Douyin app? – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok explains the difference between TikTok and its Chinese sister Douyin at her website Chozan. In 2025, Douyin was named China’s most valuable brand, with a valuation of US$105.8 billion. That marked a 26% increase from the previous year, driven by the platform’s deep integration into everyday digital life. In March 2025, Douyin reached 1 billion monthly active users in China. What exactly is Douyin?

Ashley Dudarenok:

Douyin is China’s most advanced mobile video platform, built by ByteDance to serve as a real-time content engine, recommendation system, and behavioral mirror.

It’s not just a social media app or a video feed. It’s a fully enclosed digital environment where the algorithm not only delivers content, but also orchestrates user attention, timing, and emotional rhythm within the scroll itself.

Below are the foundational elements that define how Douyin works at its core:

• A video-first infrastructure, not social-first

Douyin was never built on the concept of friends, followers, or timelines. From day one, it prioritized algorithmic distribution over social connections. You’re not shown who you know—you’re shown what holds your attention.

• An interest engine fueled by micro-interactions

Every interaction matters. Pausing for two seconds, skipping after three, replaying a scene—all of it feeds the algorithm. Douyin uses this data to fine-tune every next video, second by second.

• Content designed to be experienced in vertical isolation

Douyin videos are full-screen by default. This isn’t an aesthetic choice. It ensures undivided attention and allows for edge-to-edge optimization of both content and call-to-action dynamics. Users see nothing but the story.

• A synthetic culture layer powered by remix

Douyin thrives on replication. Its tools—like short sound loops, filters, or caption formats—are designed to turn any video into a template for others. Culture is not just consumed here. It is mechanically encouraged to reproduce.

• A platform that blurs time boundaries

Douyin’s scroll is not chronological. A post from five minutes ago can appear beside one from five days ago. What matters is not when something was posted, but how well it matches a current behavioral cluster.

• A testbed for visual grammar

Many visual trends—such as flash-cut confessionals, POV camera flips, or hand-to-camera transitions—originate on Douyin before spreading to other platforms. It’s where China’s visual vocabulary is shaped and stress-tested for the first time.

• A platform that rewrites the idea of ‘user’

On Douyin, users are not defined by who they follow or what they say. They are clusters of behavior, composed of habits, timings, reactions, and attention patterns. The platform doesn’t track identity. It tracks disposition.

Much more at Chozan.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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How a strategy change made Xiaohongshu a leading platform for travellers – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

Ask Chinese travellers what their leading platform is for purchases, both domestically and internationally, and they will point at the Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, as it is called in English. It offers a lead against competitors like Douyin and is a leading source for travellers, although only available in Chinese. “Xiaohongshu wants you deep in niche rabbit holes with people who care about the same weird stuff you do. “This isn’t just a slogan change,” says branding expert Ashley Dudarenok in Campaign Asia, “it’s Xiaohongshu cementing its moat against rivals like Douyin.”

Campaign Asia:

Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, has rolled out a brand refresh, launching a new slogan, ‘Your Lifestyle Interest Community’. The update, along with a revised opening screen, went live on July 8.  The new tagline is a literal translation of the Chinese “你的生活兴趣社区, and replaces the 2022 version, ‘Your Lifestyle Guide’. The new positioning nudges users to focus more on shared interests and community, rather than simply using the platform as a recommendation tool…

Industry watchers tell Campaign Asia-Pacific that the move is more than a superficial tweak. Ashley Dudarenok, founder of ChoZan and Alarice, called it “an important step in platform evolution”. “It crystallises its transformation from a product-review hub into China’s definitive ‘interest-based social ecosystem’,” she said. “A move validated by its 2025 Q1 financials showing 70% year-on-year daily active user growth in niche communities like outdoor sports and vintage fashion.”…

Dudarenok noted the repositioning helps Xiaohongshu stand out in an increasingly competitive space. “This isn’t just a slogan change – it’s Xiaohongshu cementing its moat against rivals like Douyin,” she said. “Where others focus on short-form entertainment and quantity, Xiaohongshu dominates ‘lifestyle scaffolding’—guiding Chinese netizens from inspiration to action within trusted micro-communities.”…

“First, hyper-personalised discovery. Algorithms now prioritise community-driven interests over generic trends, making recommendations more relevant. Think ‘Hanfu Restoration’ or ‘Balcony Gardening’ circles,” she said. She also pointed out that focusing on real user content helps restore trust. “By doubling down on authentic UGC within vertical communities, Xiaohongshu counters influencer saturation—a pain point for 68% of its Gen-Z users, as per a recent survey.” And from a brand perspective? “Self-segmented, high-intent audiences turn casual browsing into potential conversion,” she added.

More in Campaign Asia.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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How brands can deal with the new e-commerce landscape in 2023 – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

China’s e-commerce landscape is changing fast and branding expert Ashley Dudarenok explains how brands can deal with the new big five: Alibaba, JD, Pinduoduo, Douyin, WeChat, for Technode. Here are her top-5 tips.

Ashley Dudarenok:

1. Adopting an overall e-commerce strategy and repositioning flagship stores on Douyin and Pinduoduo

E-commerce platforms need to adopt a comprehensive layout and reposition their flagship stores on Douyin and Pinduoduo. Douyin is focusing on developing its digital shelf e-commerce, while Pinduoduo is leveraging its advantage in high-frequency consumer goods categories to become a comprehensive platform that meets diverse needs. For brands, as the digital shelf e-commerce landscape becomes evenly matched, Douyin/Pinduoduo flagship stores will play an equally important role as their Tmall/JD flagship stores.

2. Building a stronger cross-platform synergy and seizing the opportunity to enhance bargaining power with e-commerce platforms

As e-commerce platforms become increasingly mature, the overlap of their consumer groups will inevitably continue to increase, making it more difficult to expand user increment. However, it is a good opportunity for brands to increase their bargaining chip with e-commerce platforms in terms of traffic, product promotion, and consumer data transparency. Stronger cross-platform collaboration between brand and e-commerce platforms is worth exploring on both sides, especially in category differentiation, pricing, and promotion.

3. Reducing the reliance on livestream e-commerce influencers and strengthening content co-creation

The role of e-commerce live streaming, especially influencer live streaming, in “transactions” will be further weakened. Most influencers may find that selling standard or common products are losing their appeal to the public. Influencer live streaming will reach a critical crossroads, and influencers will need to attract consumers through better content. Currently, “selling-only” influencers who lack content will lose their competitiveness and gradually be phased out. Patterns may emerge where common goods are sold more through digital shelf e-commerce and influencers will focus on more niche products with strong digital content potential like trendy goods.

4. Developing innovative supply chain solutions

Innovative supply chain solutions such as direct sourcing and supply chain financing can help brands reduce costs and improve efficiency. Brands need to optimize their organizational structure, develop cross-platform e-commerce capabilities, accumulate universal key capabilities to support multi-platform development, and lay a foundation for other e-commerce models with future development potential, such as instant retail.

5. Improving consumer experience through data analytics and personalized marketing

Brands need to use data analytics and personalized marketing to improve the consumer experience. It can help brands better understand consumer behavior and preferences, and provide tailored products and services to meet their needs. With the convergence of platform models, the profit levels of brand flagship stores on various platforms are expected to gradually converge. In order to improve efficiency, brands need to optimize their organizational structure, develop cross-platform e-commerce capabilities, accumulate universal key capabilities to support multi-platform development, and lay a foundation for other e-commerce models with future development potential, such as instant retail.

More in Technode.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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What do I expect for young Chinese entrepreneurs – Rupert Hoogewerf

 

Rupert Hoogewerf

Hurun China rich list founder Rupert Hoogewerf explains what he expects for the young entrepreneurs in China during the coming five years at the China News.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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How TikTok excels in hooking its users with AI – Matthew Brennan

 

Matthew Brennan

Bytedance, the mother company of Douyin and TikTok, became the first to use artificial intelligence to hook their users in an unprecedented way, says China internet expert Matthew Brennan to Play Crazy Game. The TikTok algorithms turns its users into addicts, in the same way drugs do, says Brennan.

Play Crazy Game:

According to Matthew Brennan, a technology expert and author of the book Attention Factory, Chinese ByteDance, creator of TikTok, knew very well what she was doing when she developed the app.

The author claims that TikTok uses one of the most sophisticated recommendation algorithms in the world and that its resounding success did not happen by chance. “Living in China, I saw firsthand the growth of Douyin (TikTok’s name in that country) in 2017, and the impact it had on everyone around me,” he says.

Behind the application is a highly efficient technological engine, capable of automatically auditing the millions of videos published, categorizing them one by one with keywords. First, each video is released to a few hundred active users for a kind of test. Then there is a crossing of information, the so-called metrics, which map the number of views, “likes”, comments, average viewing duration, shares, etc. All to identify the most popular content and send it to the next level, where it will be released to thousands of active users. The process repeats itself and, according to the result, the content continues to be sent to the next level, released to ever-larger audiences, reaching into the millions.

“ByteDance was the first Chinese internet company to fully dedicate itself to the then-new recommendation technology and to commit to the difficult task of creating a tool that challenges the status quo of human curation. The initial gamble paid off. The foundations of TikTok’s success were laid many years before the app itself was built, and it’s no coincidence that ByteDance was the company that created it,” says Brennan.

All the success of TikTok comes down to the recommendation tool, as it is what hooks the user to content that they like, giving them the false feeling of controlling what they see by moving their thumb up, triggering an infinite scroll bar, where you lose track of time.

By falling into recommendations, the user submits to what the application wants him to see. The more the tool gets it right, the more likely the user is to stay online, ingesting the little reward pills that, like any other drug, will become increasingly irresistible and uncontrollable.

To better understand how the chances of the tool getting it right are high, making the content addictive, we can make an analogy of how recommendations between humans are and how the tool works. Normally, when we read a book that we believe is of interest to someone, we recommend reading it, but buying the book, actually reading it and giving us feedback is a long process, which is 100% at the person’s discretion, and may even not work. in nothing.

The algorithm doesn’t work that way. Brennan explains that it has so-called “machine learning”, that is, it has the ability to learn by tracking user behavior. “What makes TikTok so addictive is that it learns what you like and what you don’t. And it does it very quickly because in one minute you can watch five or six videos. In that time, you have to discard or watch the video, revealing your preferences. In this way, ByteDance can get a lot of information in a very short time”, clarifies the author and adds: “It is an extreme customization”.

The way the algorithm works, the control that the user has over what he sees is practically non-existent. While the person thinks they are making their own choices, they do not realize that they are only providing information on the “substances” that should be put in their addictive reward pills.

More at Play Crazy Game.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more internet experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How China’s Tiktok became a global gamechanger – Matthew Brennan

 

Matthew Brennan

Bytedance’s Tiktok has become a global gamechanger, and extraordinary achievements from a China-based company, says innovation analyst Matthew Brennan, author of Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China’s ByteDance at Spectra 2021.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list. 

Leadership shuffle at Bytedance: a good sign – William Bao Bean

Bytedance, the mothership of both Douyin and Tiktok, has reorganized its leadership and its internal organization, including founder and CEO Zhang Yiming. A good sign at a maturing giant, says Shanghai-based VC William Bao Bean at the Asia Nikkei.

 Asia Nikkei:

The leadership changes are a sign of the internet sector’s maturation, according to William Bao Bean, general partner of venture capital group SOSV and managing director of its Chinaccelator affiliate in Shanghai.

“The role of a leader of a large internet conglomerate, especially in China is twofold: It is investor relations and government relations,” he said. “So the skills of building an amazing product and making users super happy and then monetizing them through a creative business model are not the skills necessarily required to communicate on a quarterly basis to investors.”

More at the Asia Nikkei.

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China’s digital transformation? Do check out this list.

Tiktok and the attention economy – Matthew Brennan

 

Matthew Brennan (right)

Internet expert Matthew Brennan, author of Attention Factory: The Story of Tiktok and China’s Bytedance discusses the role of Tiktok in generating the attention economy, at the launch of his book in India, with Abhijit Bhaduri.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Bytedance will be larger than Facebook – Matthew Brennan

Matthew Brennan (right)

Internet watcher Matthew Brennan, author of Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China’s ByteDance dives into the background of Bytedance, the mother company of Tiktok, and explains why the Chinese company will outflank Facebook in the near future.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

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From teenage Chinese girls to Donald Trump: the Tiktok story -Matthew Brennan

 

Matthew Brennan

China internet guru Matthew Brennan summarizes his bestseller Attention Factory: The Story of Tiktok and China’s Bytedance and explains how Tiktok developed from a successful domestic tool for millennials into a short-video platform that even caught the attention from US President Donald Trump.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ requests form.

Are you looking for more experts on China’s digital transformation at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

How Douyin/Tiktok became mainstream – Matthew Brennan

 

Matthew Brennan

Content creation has been key for short-form engagement, writes the Jing Daily. And for  Bytedance’s Douyin/Tiktok it has paved the way from its original base of millennials to mainstream engagement, adds Matthew Brennan, author of  “Attention Factory: The Story of Tiktok and China’s Bytedance.

Jing Daily

For Douyin, the presence of arts content as dominant verticals echoes the attentions of the platform’s early millennial adopters. “It started with a core user base of trendy urbanites and art students in the early 20s demographic,” says Matthew Brennan, author of Attention Factory, a book chronicling the rise of parent company ByteDance. “By 2018, Douyin had gone fully mainstream.” Douyin’s warp speed growth was encapsulated by October 2017 during which the app’s users jumped from seven to 14 million and the average time spent in the app doubled to 40 minutes. The growth signaled a reach far beyond the initial Millennial and Gen Z users, and prompted a change of slogan to the all-encompassing “Record Beautiful Life.” Three years on, that vision includes “more than the classic dance, lip-sync, and comic content categories,” says Brennan, and touches upon the full spectrum of cultural content.

Embroidery is one such area. “I had some craft skills before, but I’ve really learned a lot through watching short-videos [on Douyin and Kuaishou],” says Han Yunyin, a retiree in Shanxi province. “Seeing other people’s [embroidery] abilities inspires me to buy more materials and continue making more myself.”

This cultural focus is increasingly driven by ByteDance itself. With more than 600 million daily active users, Douyin appears to have saturated the domestic market — though such predictions in the past have proved premature — and the Beijing-based company’s focus has turned to maintaining its audiences and extending user time, stickiness in industry parlance. Similar to YouTube, Douyin’s appeal rests with content not socializing, says Brennan, and with product teams having seemingly exhausted in-app innovations, the focus will rest on ensuring Douyin platforms unique, quality content. Arts and education are key to this strategy with Douyin self-identifying as China’s largest knowledge, culture, and art platform with nearly 15 million knowledge-based content videos in 2019.

More at the Jing Daily.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on e-commerce at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

The retail ecosystem: China’s biggest change – Ashley Dudarenok

 

Ashley Dudarenok

China’s biggest change over the past two years has been the development of its retail ecosystem, says marketing veteran Ashley Dudarenok at her vlog. Not only by thinking it out, but by implementing a change that has affected retail profoundly.

Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on China’s digital transformation? Do check out this list.

The Tiktok playbook – Matthew Brennan

 

Matthew Brennan

Douyin – the Chinese name of Tiktok – became a runaway success as a short-video platform in China. Tech watcher Matthew Brennan looks in his book ‘Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China’s ByteDance’ at the playbook Bytedance used for their lift-off before they took the platform global. An excerpt from Techcrunch.

Matthew Brennan:

Hundreds of fashionably dressed young people were arriving at 751 D.PARK, an expanse of industrial plants redeveloped into a hip culture venue in northeast Beijing. They were clad in baseball caps, brightly colored dresses, loose-fitting hip-hop style streetwear and limited-edition sneakers. The site had been transformed into something akin to the stage of the talent competition “American Idol,” spanning two floors filled with strobe lighting, high-volume music and trendy backdrops. This was an exclusive party — three hundred top Douyin creators coming together to celebrate the app’s one-year anniversary.

The online stars, billed as the “new generation of internet celebrities,” weren’t there to just socialize and enjoy themselves. Every influencer was aware of the unspoken competition to derive the best content from that night. They were all fighting to achieve a higher level of superstardom and the medium of battle was short video.

The influencers who knew each other gathered in small groups as their assistants tirelessly captured fifteen-second videos of their carefully crafted skits. Loners roamed around the dance floor, absorbed in finding the ideal lighting for their lip-syncing selfie videos. Lesser-known influencers nervously approached more famous ones, proposing to record a dance together to potentially tap into their peers’ following. Loud hip-hop music kept playing in the background as creators hurried to touch up the videos they had just shot. Once the editing was done, they uploaded their works and anxiously waited for the app’s algorithms to judge who would grab more eyeballs.

Dance teams took to the stage to display their skills. The crowd bopped their heads back and forth as rappers attempted to impress with clever lyrics. Later as the hosts were midway through giving out awards, a wave of noise erupted from the back of the crowd interrupting the proceedings.

It was Yiming. Dressed in a black baseball cap and gray T-shirt and accompanied by Lidong. The audience went wild — the CEO had decided to drop in unannounced! Immediately he was bombarded with requests to take pictures and videos. As those around him whooped and cried out wildly, the entrepreneur simply smiled and kept his hands calmly by his side, an awkward 34-year-old engineer type among the hyper fashionable, mostly teenage hip-hop crowd.

He already knew from looking at the data, but this was confirmation in the flesh — Douyin had built a robust community, with powerful momentum and was on the verge of doing something special.

October 1st marks the beginning of “Golden Week,” a seven-day-long official Chinese national holiday. Periods like these are big opportunities for China’s internet industry. People’s behaviors change for a week; many find more time for entertainment and to try new things.

Over October, Douyin’s daily users doubled from seven to 14 million; two months later, they reached 30 million. Over those three months, the 30-day retention rates jumped from eight to over 20%, the average time spent in the app soared from 20 to 40 minutes. It was as if some magic rocket fuel had suddenly been added, boosting every key metric. What had changed?

The answer was Zhu Wenjia. Zhu Wenjia, hired from Baidu in 2015, was widely considered to be one of the top-three best people in the entire company when it came to algorithm technology. He ran one of ByteDance’s most capable engineering teams and had recently been assigned to work on Douyin. The team’s work harnessing the full power of ByteDance’s content recommendation back end led directly to the astounding October results.

More at Techcrunch.

Matthew Brennan is a speaker at the China Speakers  Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more experts on e-commerce at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.