People's Daily commented on Quick Hand App: Facing up to "grassroots entertainment needs"

How far can the simple and crude dualism of refined and vulgar go? Will the "majority" of the Internet in China be "silent" forever? Who else will meet the cultural needs of hundreds of millions of people, and can they better meet them? We hope that time will provide better answers to these questions.

Recently, an investment has shaken the Internet Short Video industry: Short Video App "Quick Hand" announced that it has received US$350 million in financing led by Tencent. In this news,"US$350 million" is naturally a highlight, but the object of investment-fast hands is also quite eye-catching.

I have to say that fast hands are a complex contradiction. On the one hand, it has a huge user size. According to official data of Fast Hand, its daily active users have exceeded 50 million, and nearly 5 million Short Video are photographed and uploaded by users every day. But on the other hand, Fast Hand has been plagued by the negative reputation of "local" and "low" for many years. Last year, an article that hyped up the circle of friends described it as an App that gathers video content such as "self-abuse","vulgar jokes" and "weird behaviors". Although this article subsequently caused controversy, it is obvious to all that Fast Hand has a "different style" from other Short Video.

Open the fast hand, what comes into view is an intuitive or even slightly simple interface. Short Video are neatly arranged and clicked to see. The length is generally between a few seconds and dozens of seconds. The content is basically the user's mobile phone selfie, including personal performances such as singing and dancing, life scenes such as cats and dogs, combing hair and braids, as well as "gluttony show" and funny paragraphs, etc., but in terms of video style, personnel dress, picture background, and even song and dance aesthetics (shouting wheat, ghost step dance), They are far from the "petty bourgeoisie" and "exquisite" sought after by Internet users, and have a strong style of third-tier cities and towns. For netizens in first-tier and second-tier cities who often discuss Paris fashion, Nordic furniture, folk songs and Korean dance online, what fast hands convey is an unheard aesthetic orientation and life scene, which is inevitably labeled as "local" and "low".

But what is interesting is that although the so-called "mainstream netizens" are in charge of the "power of life and death" of fast-handed "style", fast-handed has a huge user base and remains unmoved. Some research institutions have reported that about 50% of the current vertical Short Video App users are born in the 1990s, and more than 60% of the users come from third-tier cities and below. Although the "silent majority" cannot win the right to speak on the Internet on Weibo and WeChat compared to the "City Club Play" users, they use their actions to stand up for fast hands. Data show that the average number of years of education for the population aged 25 and above in my country in 2010 was 8.6 years, while data for 2015 showed that the proportion of my country's population with a college education or above just reached 11%. What kind of cultural entertainment does the large group of young people with low education need? When people are keen to talk about the box office of theater art films or the latest economics bestsellers, and when consumers of entertainment products are defaulted as white-collar, middle-class, and intellectual class, this problem seems to be concealed intentionally or unintentionally.

In the past two years, China's film market has developed by leaps and bounds, and the soaring box office revenue in third-and fourth-tier cities has heated the concept of "small town youth" and made entertainment in third-and fourth-tier cities just need to appear in front of the public. However, what many people don't see is that the penetration of movie box office in third-and fourth-tier cities is still limited due to theater hardware. The box office purchasing power of "small town youth" is only the tip of the iceberg of their entertainment needs, and more demand is hidden deeper in the "underground". Mobile phones and mobile Internet are undoubtedly the most "grassroots penetration" entertainment consumer terminals, and business opportunities for Short Video are nurtured among them.

In the surging expansion movement of Short Video, many apps have chosen to cooperate with more mature and professional video producers, or have introduced well-known Internet celebrities and celebrities to join. In contrast, Fast Hand emphasizes its popularization, folk nature and sharing principles in an almost deliberate manner. More than 10% of its user base comes from first-tier cities, and nearly 80% comes from second-tier and third-tier cities-very close to the geographical distribution of Internet users in China. Perhaps this is why fast hands can generate such a large amount of viscosity for so-called "grassroots users." There is no doubt that some of the vulgar and illegal content on the fast hand needs to be rectified. However, in the context of unbalanced regional economic and cultural development, cultural and entertainment consumption needs at different levels should be recognized and respected; it should also be noted that in the vast and diverse land of China, there is still room for market upgrading of entertainment products.

How far can the simple and crude dualism of refined and vulgar go? Will the "majority" of the Internet in China be "silent" forever? Who else will meet the cultural needs of hundreds of millions of people, and can they better meet them? We hope that time will provide better answers to these questions.

Editor: Nancy