Thread by @ruima

Ever wonder why Chinese tech cos are really attentive to creators & constantly lowering barriers to creation?

Simple. Being newer to self expression, there were way less creators on a % basis in China (even now, if u ask operators), so this is / was a necessity for survival.

I remember long ago attending a talk by a Chinese Tumblr clone founder (bonus if you know what this was), and he went through the economics of the biz on the creator acquisition side, and it was unsustainably expensive.
Co died, it's a hard prob to figure out in a short time.

So you can't just MAKE ppl creative, but u can make it easier for them to create.
A few ways:

Make tools (ie Capcut from ByteDance, TikTok filters, duet feature) to make it physically easier.

Platform dynamics (campaigns, hashtags)

Seed content (ie Douyin gesture dances)

And here I append what ByteDance Kelly Zhang has said was one of the first big viral hits of Douyin, the shower dance.

It's mind-numbingly simple, since you just sit there and move your hands:

Anyway, lack of creators is in part why the tumblr clone failed, but Weibo survived, bc the barrier to creation was much lower.
Also why Youku the YouTube clone was much too early & basically became Hulu. There wasn't the masses of UGC creators to support that length of content.

But here's the actual takeaway. Kudos if u read this far. What this means is that Chinese cos are creator & content obsessed. The product is just one part of it.

You need to extend it (creator tools) but also maintain & grow it (creator ecosystem). You need to run “operations."

You need a lot of manual tweaking, ecosystem building, observing and reacting to what is super dynamic, on product and content level.

ie China had surprise hit movie "Hi Mom" over Lunar New Year, Douyin had filters & campaigns out IMMEDIATELY.

So headcount wise u see a ton of "operations" staff, much more than tech. Yes the tech needs to work, it needs to be great, but when you're dealing w live social content, you need operations & you need to respect operations. It drives success equally or even more than product.

If you talk to Chinese entrepreneurs, most of them are still very enamored with Western products. (Various reasons I can give in another thread.) But most of them don't think the West understands operations. & so will really struggle in live social.

OK, now tell me ur thoughts.