Kuaishou

Kuaishou (Chinese: 快手; lit.: 'quick hand') is a Chinese video sharing mobile app developed by Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co., Ltd, with a particularly strong user base among users outside of China's Tier 1 cities.[2] Outside Mainland China, it has also gained considerable popularity in other markets, topping the Google Play and Apple App Store's "Most Downloaded" lists in eight countries. This app is known as Snack Video in India.[3] It is often referred to as "Kwai" in overseas markets. Its main competitor is Douyin, which is known as TikTok outside of China.[4]

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]
Websitekuaishou.com

Kuaishou was founded by Su Hua (宿华) and Cheng Yixiao (程一笑).[5] Prior to co-founding Kuaishou, Su Hua had worked for both Google and Baidu as a software engineer.[6] The company is headquartered in Haidian District, Beijing.[7]

History

Kuaishou's predecessor, "GIF Kuaishou", was founded in March 2011. GIF Kuaishou was a mobile app 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.[8] By 2013, the app had already reached 100 million daily users.[9] By 2019, that figure had surpassed 200 million active daily users.[10]

In March 2017, Kuaishou closed a US$350 million investment round led by Tencent.[9] In January 2018, Forbes estimated the company's valuation to be US$18 billion.[6]

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 March 2020, Kuaishou purchased the online video platform AcFun. In early May, 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]

In June 2020, the Government of India banned Kwai/Snack Video along with 58 other apps, citing "data and privacy issues".[16] Recent border tensions between India and China might have also played a role in the ban, as there has been an increasingly political "Boycott China" movement in India due to the competitive relations between the two countries in recent years.

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. 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.
  3. "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.
  4. "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.
  5. 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.
  6. "Su Hua". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2019-09-02. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
  7. "Bloomberg Company Profile: Beijing Kuaishou Technology Co Ltd". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on September 2, 2019. Retrieved September 2, 2019.
  8. "Kuaishou". Baike Baidu.
  9. "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.
  10. "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.
  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.
  16. DelhiJune 29, Rahul Shrivastava New; June 29, 2020UPDATED:; Ist, 2020 22:21. "Govt bans 59 Chinese apps including TikTok as border tensions simmer in Ladakh". India Today. Retrieved 2020-06-29.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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