Kuaishou

Kuaishou (Chinese: 快手) is a Chinese video sharing app, developed by Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., Ltd. In addition to China, it has also gained considerable popularity in other markets: it has topped the Google Play and Apple App Store "most downloaded" lists in eight countries outside of China.[2] It is often referred to as "Kwai" in overseas markets.

Kuaishou
Native name
快手
Privately held company
IndustryInternet
FoundedMarch 2011 (2011-03)
FounderSu Hua
Cheng Yixiao
Headquarters
Beijing
,
China
Revenue US$ 7.2 billion (2019)[1]
Websitewww.kuaishou.com

Kuaishou's predecessor, "GIF Kuaishou", was founded in March 2011. GIF Kuaishou was a mobile application created to make and share GIF pictures. In November 2012, Kuaishou transformed into a short video community, and a platform for users to record and share videos depicting their everyday lives.[3] By 2013, the app had already reached 100 million daily users.[4] By 2019, that figure had surpassed 200 million active daily users.[5]

Kuaishou has a particularly strong user base among users outside of China's tier 1 cities.[6]

In March 2017, Kuaishou closed a US$350 million investment round led by Tencent.[4] In January 2018, Forbes estimated the company's valuation to be approximately US$18 billion.[7]

Kuaishou was founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao.[8] Prior to co-founding Kuaishou, Su Hua had worked for both Google and Baidu as an engineer.[7] The company is headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing, China.[9]

Kuaishou's main competitor is Douyin, which is known as TikTok outside of China.[10]

In 2019, the company announced a partnership with the People's Daily, an official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, to help it experiment with artificial intelligence in news.[11]

In early May of 2020, Kuaishou launched a short-video app called Zynn, which paid users to use the app and refer other people. It was criticized for being a pyramid scheme,[12] plagiarizing user interfaces from TikTok,[13] and stealing user content from said platform.[14] The app was removed from the Google Play Store on June 10.[15]

See also

References
  1. "Kuaishou earned revenue of $7.2 billion in 2019: report". technode.com. 11 February 2020. Archived from the original on 8 April 2020. Retrieved 4 May 2020.
  2. "Tencent-backed Kwai App ranked Most Popular social short video app". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2019-09-03. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
  3. "Kuaishou". Baike Baidu.
  4. "Behind the success of Kuaishou, the biggest social video sharing app in China". Technode. May 17, 2017. Archived from the original on September 2, 2019. Retrieved September 2, 2019.
  5. "Is short-video start-up Kuaishou too 'Zen' for China's internet culture?". South China Morning Post. 2019-06-20. Archived from the original on 2019-09-02. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
  6. Synced (2019-08-12). "Tencent-backed Video App Kuaishou Is Turning Chinese Country Folk Into Hollywood Directors". Synced. Archived from the original on 2019-09-02. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
  7. "Su Hua". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2019-09-02. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
  8. Jing, Meng (June 20, 2019). "Is short-video start-up Kuaishou too 'Zen' for China's internet culture? Its founders think so". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on September 2, 2019. Retrieved September 2, 2019.
  9. "Bloomberg Company Profile: Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co Ltd". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on September 2, 2019. Retrieved September 2, 2019.
  10. "One of China's hottest video apps is flirting with video gaming". South China Morning Post. 2018-12-19. Archived from the original on 2019-09-02. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
  11. Li, Jane (September 20, 2019). "China's tech giants are helping the Communist Party's newspaper fine-tune its online voice". Quartz. Archived from the original on September 20, 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-22.
  12. "Zynn - App Review". www.commonsensemedia.org. 2020-06-04. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  13. Klein, Matt. "Zynn, A New TikTok Copycat, Pays Users—But Its Origins Are More Interesting". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  14. "Zynn, the Hot New Video App, Is Full of Stolen Content". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
  15. Vincent, James (2020-06-10). "Google removes TikTok clone Zynn from Play Store after reports of plagiarism". The Verge. Retrieved 2020-06-14.
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