Chapter 508 The last piece of the puzzle

Chapter 508 The last piece of the puzzle

Chapter 508 The last piece of the puzzle

Speaking of short video platforms, Douyin is actually not the first.

Since Galaxy Group wants to enter this track, it is impossible for it not to conduct preliminary research. In the mobile Internet short video track, there are actually old players both at home and abroad.

For example, in 2011, when mobile Internet was just emerging, Cheng Yixiao founded GIF Kuaishou, which produced funny animated pictures and used them in Weibo and Renren communities, spreading them quickly and accumulating initial users.

Later in 2013, Kuaishou transformed from a tool into a short video community and was officially renamed "Kuaishou", focusing on UGC content.

As of this year, that is, 2016, the number of Kuaishou users has grown to 3 million, and it has accumulated a large number of users in third- and fourth-tier cities.

In addition to Kuaishou, there are many similar short video platforms in China.

In August 2013, Yixia Technology launched Miaopai, which set the fixed length of short videos at 8 seconds. Relying on the traffic advantage of Weibo, the platform attracted many celebrities and internet celebrities to join.

In September 2013, Tencent Weishi was launched, with the length of short videos set to 9 seconds. It was an important product in Tencent's early layout of the short video field.

In 2015, Xiaokaxiu, a lip-syncing tool imitating Dubsmash, was launched and quickly became popular thanks to its star effect.

Vine: Launched in June 2012, this short video platform with a fixed duration of 6 seconds is one of the earliest mobile short video platforms in the world. It was acquired by Twitter in 6 and set off a short video craze in the US market.

Dubsmash: Released in November 14, it is a lip-syncing tool developed in Germany. The gameplay requires users to select sounds, perform together and share videos. It quickly became popular in the European and American markets and is now a representative short video platform in the world.

Musical.ly: Founded by a Shanghai team in 2015, it is mainly aimed at the North American market. It focuses on short music videos and supports users to lip-sync and creatively edit.

Flipagram: An American short video application launched in 2014, which supports users to create short videos by adding music to photos and videos.

These platforms played an important role in the early development of short videos. Through different functions and operating models, they promoted the popularization of mobile short videos.

However, as Douyin expanded rapidly based on the experience of these platforms and combined algorithm recommendations and social attributes, many foreign short video platforms were acquired by it, and Douyin eventually became the world's leading short video platform.

Of course, that was Wang Hao’s previous life. Now 2016 has just begun. Because a little butterfly like him flapped its wings, many aspects of China have changed.

For example, if he had founded Toutiao in advance, Zhang Yiming's entrepreneurial path would have changed, and it would naturally be impossible for him to establish Douyin.

However, the success of Douyin does not necessarily depend on Zhang Yiming.

Although when it comes to the TikTok app, what people talk about most is its big data recommendation algorithm. According to many people, this should be the core technology of TikTok.

But in fact, the development of Douyin's recommendation algorithm is a process of joint action of technological iteration and strategic decision-making. Its core lies in the combination of the algorithm team's technological breakthroughs and Zhang Yiming's strategic decisions, rather than the results of a single person.

Moreover, Tik Tok’s recommendation algorithm also has its industry technology foundation. It is not independently developed from scratch. It is based on the long-term accumulation of Internet recommendation technology.

Since the 20s, the “collaborative filtering” technology has been used to match similar users through user behavior data, such as Amazon’s early recommendation logic.

After 2000, recommendations began to be made based on content features such as text and images, such as the "content recommendations" of early news aggregation platforms.

After 2010, neural network models improved their ability to process complex features, such as Google's "deep learning" deep neural network advertising recommendation.

In this way, Douyin inherited traditional recommendation technology and combined it with the characteristics of mobile Internet, and finally achieved three innovations.

"Mr. Wang, look, these are the three new improvements we have made to the original recommendation algorithm.

The first is the 'real-time feedback mechanism', which uses the collected data on user behaviors such as sliding, staying, and liking, and uses deep learning algorithms and real-time feedback algorithms to update the recommendation model for individual users at the millisecond level, and draw a 'dynamic interest map' point-to-point.

In this way, we can accurately capture user interests and achieve “one size fits all” content distribution.

Then there is the 'multimodal fusion', which can fully integrate the visual, auditory (music), text (subtitles) and other features of the video, breaking through the limitations of single-dimensional recommendations.

There is also the 'cold start optimization'. In accordance with the 'technology for all' product philosophy that you, Mr. Wang, required at the beginning of the project development, in order to achieve the concept of 'letting ordinary people's content be seen', we have specially adjusted the fairness design of the algorithm and established a 'public domain traffic pool' mechanism.

Through this mechanism, the behavioral data of “seed users” can quickly locate audiences for new content/accounts, making it easier for new creators and high-quality content to break through the circle, thus solving the cold start problem in traditional recommendation systems..."

The head of the Douyin development team kept introducing various information about the software to Wang Hao and the group's senior managers, and Wang Hao listened and nodded frequently.

At least for now, the TikTok developed by Galaxy Group is not much different from the TikTok in its previous life. Both use efficient content matching mechanisms and highly accurate recommendation algorithms to improve user stickiness and retention rates, forming a positive cycle of "content-user-traffic" in software operation.

Thanks to the strong economic and technological strength of Galaxy Group itself, in the process of developing the TikTok algorithm this time, they not only had a large team of engineers, but also the industry's top algorithm scientists and architects working together.

With their existence, the Galaxy Group's version of Douyin has actually become an extremely mature product, almost 2018% of the completion of the original 90 version of Douyin.

“At present, our software has completed large-scale testing, and various bugs in operation have been discovered and resolved.

What our team will do next is to continue to optimize the algorithm based on the operating conditions after the software is officially launched.

We also have several goals in this regard. One is to develop a ranking model based on the attention mechanism, which can be used to improve the accuracy of user interest prediction.

Another is to introduce reinforcement learning (RL) to achieve an 'exploration-exploitation' balance, pushing diversified content while satisfying users' known interests.

Of course, I am also very confident in our Douyin, and I believe that it will achieve excellent results in a very short time.

Therefore, how to support real-time computing for tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of daily active users and solve engineering problems such as distributed computing and model compression are also what we need to overcome next.”

Wow!
After the technical director of the Douyin development team introduced the content of the software, Wang Hao took the lead in applauding, and then gave high evaluation and praise to the team development members.

“Regarding the mobile Internet short video platform, many people think that it is just a supplement to our long video platform such as Galaxy Video Network.

However, I said when this project was first launched that it is far more important than we and even the public imagine. I have always had an ideal, which is to revitalize our Chinese film and television cultural industry.

To this end, in the past I led my brothers to step by step build our own Chinese film industrialization system and shoot more risky Chinese-language science fiction films.

However, this is far from enough if we want to truly revitalize China's film and television cultural industry. We still need more people to participate in it, mobilize more people, and guide more people who are committed to this, who are passionate and interested in film and television cultural creation, but who do not have the conditions or opportunities.

This requires providing them with cheaper, more convenient and faster feedback tools for disseminating their works.

The TikTok app you developed just meets this condition.

I believe that with its help, more people will invest in the film and television cultural industry in the future.

They do not have to be directors, producers, screenwriters, or actors. They could also be doctors, construction workers, mothers, delivery men, gourmets, or even farmers in the fields, forest rangers in the mountains and forests, border guards on the front lines, or children and the elderly left behind in rural areas.

These groups, which were rarely followed, filmed, or discovered by the media, journalists, and directors, will one day be able to use the software you have developed and the platform you have provided to share the wonderful moments and details of their lives with the society and their compatriots, make their own real voices heard, and realize more possible value. "

Wang Hao's words were passionate and sincere.

Just like the slogan hanging in the Douyin development office, "Douyin, record your beautiful life!", Wang Hao wanted to make this software not just to make money.

Speaking of wealth, Wang Hao is still very young, but he is now one of the top people on the Forbes rich list in China. Not counting the shares he has on hand, the cash alone is enough to last for several lifetimes.

If you say he is greedy and stingy, just ask around and everyone will know that in the whole of Shangjing, the salaries and benefits of the employees of his Xinghe Group are among the best and top-notch among private groups.

Just the fact that there is no overtime, two days off a week, and all holidays are normal, I don’t know how many workers are envious of it.

From the beginning to the end, over the past ten years since he was reborn, Wang Hao has always maintained his original intention towards his companions in the classroom, and it has never changed.

Now with the successful development of Douyin, after it goes online in the future, as long as its operation can be as good as Douyin in his previous life, then Wang Hao's layout for China's film, television, culture and entertainment industry will have completed the last piece of the puzzle.

With this, in the future, Galaxy Group will be the leader in the domestic film and television industry that can rival Internet giants and capital such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu.

It is even possible to compare it with Hollywood's Disney.

Of course, the current Douyin is just a beginning. Although it has the support of the Galaxy Group, the start will be smoother and easier than Wang Hao’s Douyin in his previous life...

"But we can't relax and be careless yet!"

In front of the Douyin team, Wang Hao praised them and promised to give financial rewards. However, he also made new demands and pointed out more problems in the final stage.

“First of all, the subsequent development of TikTok must still be based on the core concept of ‘recommendation is better than search’. The recommendation engine will gradually replace search in the future due to its automatic distribution and low threshold.

Our advantage is the constantly iterating algorithm logic, which will be the basis for us to compete with those big companies in the future.

Secondly, our vision cannot be limited to China alone.

Galaxy Group is a large multinational cultural enterprise. I hope that Douyin can also have a global technical architecture and complete a unified architecture in different regions technically, which can support the rapid replication of this software to overseas markets in the future and form a technical barrier and surpass overseas counterparts.

In addition, we also need to note that Douyin’s future diversified business development will also have great differences in the demand for recommendations.

For example, e-commerce recommendations need to balance product conversion rate and user experience. There are also different recommendation logics for live broadcasts, long videos, and different video types.

There are also controversial issues that we need to balance and govern in advance.

Such as anti-addiction system, youth green protection system, content safety review system, live broadcast reward standardization system...

Tik Tok is a good thing. It can help a large number of users, but it will also inevitably cause a series of problems. We must pay more attention to this, be vigilant, and take precautions before it happens! "

"Well, I'm afraid you've heard this a lot, but I still want to thank you for your efforts and dedication to the development of this software and the construction of this platform over the past year."

Wang Hao looked at all the members of the Douyin development team on this floor and smiled.

"Next, I announce that the TikTok app will be officially launched this morning!"

As Wang Hao spoke, several salutes rang out in the office, and colorful ribbons and pieces of paper flew in the air. All the Douyin development and operation members were smiling, but also a little nervous.

Next, the results of their hard work day and night will finally be put to the test. Whether they will have a successful future depends on how well Douyin performs after it goes online.

While clapping, Wang Hao looked at the employees and development team managers who were still a little nervous. He actually had more confidence in Douyin than they did.

At the very least, Douyin will definitely receive strong support from Galaxy Group in the future.

The technical reserves they have accumulated over the years in shooting, editing, special effects, music soundtrack, etc. will provide Douyin with better creative tools.

The music, movies, and TV dramas that Galaxy Group continues to acquire will also provide a rich library of materials for TikTok.

There is also Galaxy Group’s Xingdou Culture Agency and Good Production Network, which account for 80% of the behind-the-scenes workers in the entertainment industry. Once they join Douyin with the company’s recommendation, they will provide a large number of high-quality content creators.

Not to mention that Galaxy Group also has Taopiao.com which can provide early traffic diversion for Douyin, and has OPPO phones that can be pre-installed and recommended in the mobile app store.

Oh, by the way, the movie "Ball Lightning" which is about to be released will also have interactive promotion with TikTok.

If this still can't soar into the sky, then it would be a miracle.

(End of this chapter)