5 Lessons from China's Internet Companies

-Our online social graphs are no longer dependent on our offline connections.

-For years, people have touted the rise of social commerce in the West but we haven’t seen any players break through...The exception to this may be in vertical opportunities within social commerce. Within food, for instance, Snackpass describes itself as “food meets friends” and lets you gift your friends food. It’s creative and unlike anything els... See more

Tencent, Bilibili, and Kuaishou all rely heavily on “value-added services”—things like micropayments and subscriptions and virtual currencies. More Western companies will turn to VAS, particularly if Apple and Google reduce the 30% tax they take on every digital economy. Already, Discord and Clubhouse have eschewed ads and Facebook, Snap, and Amazo... See more

-Bilibili is built around shared interests and purposefully builds friction into community. In order to join a community, users have to pass a 100-question exam. A representative question to join the Harry Potter community, for instance, is: “How many horcruxes does Voldemort have?” (Any self-respecting person should know the answer is seven.)

-When you watch a Presidential Debate or NBA final, how often are you checking live reactions on Twitter or internet message boards? Bullet commentary embeds that community directly into the product, letting you tap into the hive mind and find camaraderie through your screen.

-In China, there’s a fascinating dating app called Yidui. Yidui users go on a video date chaperoned by a matchmaker, who helps guide the conversation and keep the date on track. At the same time, viewers—often thousands of them—can livestream the date. Viewers type in the chat and suggest conversation topics, give reactions to how they think the da... See more

One through-line that cuts through all of the above is business model innovation. U.S. consumer internet has long been reliant on digital advertising. Partly because it matured on mobile—at a time when mobile advertising was less proven and mature—the Chinese consumer internet pioneered more creative and diversified revenue streams. Take Facebook a... See more

-Despite China’s crackdown—another proofpoint of how challenging it’s become to do business in the country—the West can learn from Chinese tutoring marketplaces. Edtech in the U.S. and Europe remains solitary—some form of Zoom school and individual assignments. It’s telling that America’s most valuable education startups are MOOCs (massive open onl... See more

-The most interesting feature of Bilibili—and the one most central to community—is bullet commentary. When you consume content on Bilibili, comments from fellow community members flash across your screen, time-stamped to when that user had that reaction. Only members of the community—those who passed that 100-question exam—can leave comments, ensur... See more

Bullet Commentary & the Hive Mentality