Techbuzz China By Pandaily

Episode 55 of TechBuzz China is about a company we have admittedly relegated to a “supporting role” thus far here on TechBuzz: Kuaishou, which is rightfully known as the original Chinese short-video app. Rui and Ying-Ying explain that while Bytedance and its Douyin and TikTok products seem to be clear stars today, that trend was not always obvious. It is true that Kuaishou is experiencing declining market share and experimenting with new, hard-charging avenues of growth, but our co-hosts argue that its role in today’s content ecosystem has generally been understated by Western observers. To that end, this week, we delve into the history, leadership, business models, shareholders, and self-proclaimed mission of the Kuaishou app. Listeners may decide for themselves: Do Kuaishou and Douyin really serve different demographics with decidedly different products? Or does a large 46.5 percent user overlap mean that this doesn’t matter — that it is, in fact, a battle to the death, and for a greater end purpose th