TikTok 2024, no good start

At the beginning of 2024, what is the development momentum of TikTok? Let's take a look in this article.

At the beginning of 2024, what new developments has the Douyin content ecosystem presented?

Looking around, there are two accounts with tens of millions of followers this month. Among them, @NetEase Egg Party experienced an explosion in January due to its Spring Festival theme event during the Spring Festival. Users can receive corresponding rewards by browsing or following the official account and posting pictures, texts and videos, which has led to a surge in the number of followers of the account.

Another account that gained tens of millions of followers in one month was Dong Yuhui's new account @与辉同行. The account officially launched its first live broadcast on January 9, and the number of people online at the same time exceeded 100,000 as soon as it started, and even exceeded 1.7 million during the peak period. The entire live broadcast lasted more than 4 hours, with a total GMV of more than 150 million. Afterwards, the account started a high-frequency live broadcast mode, and conducted more than 40 live broadcasts with goods in January, with total sales of more than 100 million, and the number of fans also rose all the way to more than 10 million.

@与辉同行TikTok video screenshot

In addition, there are two accounts with an increase of 5 million to 10 million followers. One is the brand account @China Unicom Official Flagship Store, and the other is the game anchor @陈泽-.

Among them, @陈泽-originally broadcast live on Kuaishou, and he gained a lot of popularity because of his outstanding skills in the field of games and the fun of PK with other masters. On January 11, he posted on Weibo about his contract dispute with Kuaishou, and the 100 million yuan liquidated damages attracted a lot of discussion and attention online. Then, on January 12, he switched to Douyin to start his live broadcast debut, which attracted more attention.

@陈泽- Tik Tok video screenshot

In addition to these four accounts, there is one account with 4-5 million followers, which is the official account of Xigua Video @高能电影不停片, which mainly shares various film and television entertainment clips; there are three accounts with 2-3 million followers, and the remaining 12 accounts have 1-2 million followers. From the perspective of content creation, the overall trend of the January 2024 fan growth list did not bring too many surprises, and was even slightly "sluggish".

Judging from the types of accounts on the list, they cover a total of tracks including games, music, travel, food, outdoor, mother and baby, emotions, cars, film and television entertainment, among which game accounts occupy three seats, travel, food, and outdoor accounts each occupy two seats, and the remaining tracks are distributed more evenly.

What needs to be particularly emphasized is that after failing to gain any followers on the fan growth list in December 2023, no account on the plot track made the list in January 2024, and the trend of "loneliness" became increasingly obvious.

Looking at the accounts on the list, a few accounts such as @张大仙, @东北雨姐, @室内发 (东方阿保) are familiar faces to us recently, while most accounts are new faces that appear on the fan growth list for the first time. Next, Kas will focus on interpreting some accounts.

01 @DunhuangLaoma (Sheep Head): A new dark horse emerges in the food broadcasting track

The food expert @敦煌老马(羊头) follows the food broadcasting route, but unlike other food broadcasting experts, Lao Ma focuses on relatively niche food such as mutton head, and has developed his own set of processes and style of eating, thereby building up the differentiated characteristics of the account.

@Dunhuang Lao Ma (Sheep Head) Douyin video screenshot

Specifically, Lao Ma's eating process in each video is almost the same. Before he starts eating, he will first say a fixed opening line "Just eat something simple", and then prepare the dipping sauce while introducing his preparation process in a low voice:

"Pour in the spicy pepper and salt from Lao Ma's, add some hot rapeseed oil, some vinegar, soul juice, and gia~"

Because Lao Ma speaks with a strong Gansu dialect and his voice is low and unclear, this introduction sounds particularly magical. Many netizens call it "the devil's whisper" , especially the last magical sentence "pour it on", which is regarded by users as a spell before the eating ceremony.

@Dunhuang Lao Ma (Sheep Head) Douyin video screenshot

After the "ritual" was over and the sauce was sprinkled all over the sheep's head, Lao Ma couldn't wait to start the silky eating process: first he pulled off the sheep's scalp with his bare hands, then broke the sheep's skull up and down, and sucked the mutton from the bones one by one, with affectionate and firm eyes, showing his love for the sheep's head. Accompanied by the "slurp" "slurp" sound of eating and the hot air that filled the entire screen, a sheep's head weighing more than ten pounds was sucked in by him in 3 minutes. Many netizens joked that he was not eating the sheep's head, but "drinking the sheep's head". During this period, Lao Ma was used to preparing an onion for himself to avoid burning his mouth, and he would take a big bite from time to time. This behavior was also jokingly called "purple apple (onion) immune to fire damage (reset oral temperature)" by many netizens.

@Dunhuang Lao Ma (Sheep Head) Douyin video screenshot

According to netizens, following this process, Lao Ma ate a total of 97 sheep heads in 2023. His love for sheep heads, coupled with his magical and unique eating process, quickly made him the target of many netizens' jokes.

Some people call him the Sheep Head Terminator and the Internet "Sheep Death Lord", who is in charge of the flock of sheep. "There is no desire for Land Rover in his eyes, but deep affection for the sheep" and "300 days out of 365 days a year, he is watering the sheep". Many users will post cute photos of lambs in the comment section of his videos, accompanied by texts such as "Uncle, what are you eating?" and "I'm not afraid of you". In other related video comment sections, you can always see Lao Ma.

@Dunhuang Lao Ma (Sheep Head) Douyin video comment area

Some people also started to create secondary creations, either by adapting Lao Ma's "Devil's Whisper" into a song, or by shooting various imitation and meme videos, and gained considerable views and likes through them.

For example, freelance artist @野路子 created an anime illustration based on an old horse and a sheep, which received 815,000 likes and attracted many netizens to interact.

@野路子TikTok video screenshot

@Dunhuang Laoyang (Ma Tou) performed the scene of Lao Ma's "pouring", while holding a guitar, he sang the adapted song "Li Jiao Qiao" of "Devil's Whisper" based on "Anhe Bridge". The whole scene made people laugh, and the video finally received 379,000 likes.

@Dunhuang Laoyang (horse head) Douyin video screenshot

@程成, who has less than 10,000 fans, and his pet black dog performed a "dog head" version of "浇给". The tacit cooperation between man and dog created a comedic effect that made people laugh, which attracted 174,000 likes.

@程成TikTok video screenshot

At present, the video playback volume of the topic #浇给 has reached 1.18 billion times, and the public's enthusiasm for playing with memes has not subsided, which has also driven the popularity of @敦煌老马 (羊头) to continue to rise.

Tik Tok screenshot

Undoubtedly, entering into relatively niche food categories and forming his own unique way of eating food are the basic conditions for @敦煌老马(羊头) to become popular, and the trend of playing with memes on this basis has further promoted the account's popularity. Making your content have the genes of memes, becoming a meme, and adding memes are undoubtedly a powerful tool for short video accounts to become popular.

02 Which other accounts performed well in January?

After looking at @敦煌老马(羊头), let’s take a look at other accounts with outstanding performance in the follower growth list at the beginning of 2024.

@冰城左哥 has been the host of Harbin Ice and Snow World Dream Stage for 12 consecutive years.

In the winter of 2023, "Harbin Ice and Snow World" became the most popular tourist attraction. As the host, "Brother Zuoyou" often led tens of thousands of tourists to dance the rabbit dance outdoors at -30 degrees Celsius. The strong sense of rhythm and full work enthusiasm of "Brother Zuoyou" left a deep impression on countless tourists. As the popularity of Harbin and the Ice and Snow World continued to rise, more than 100,000 online viewers became the norm in "Brother Zuoyou's" live broadcast room, and the number of fans on his account continued to grow.

@冰城左右哥TikTok video screenshot

Emotional blogger @单良¹⁰³, an Internet emotional strategist, has released a collection of live broadcasts titled "Emotional Answers", which has currently been viewed 86 million times.

During the live broadcast, he would listen carefully to fans' emotional confusion and ask questions at any time, record key information on the whiteboard, and then express his views directly, accurately hitting the crux of the problem while giving corresponding emotional answers. Through his live broadcast, users can not only see various emotional stories and emotional entanglements, satisfy their curiosity and novelty, but also gain certain emotional experience and emotional knowledge, thus achieving the purpose of emotional learning.

@单良¹⁰³ Tik Tok video screenshot

After topping the list of most popular users in December last year, treasure appraising blogger @听泉寻宝 remains popular in January 2024. The account mainly connects with viewers in the live broadcast room to help them identify various treasures. For ordinary users who are full of curiosity and desire to explore, treasure appraisal itself is very attractive. In @听泉寻宝's live broadcast room, users can not only see various treasures, real or fake, to satisfy their curiosity, but also enjoy entertaining interactions between the blogger and different people connected to the live broadcast room, which brings a lot of jokes to the video and attracts more people.

Judging from the January fan growth list, it is becoming increasingly difficult for ordinary creators to significantly increase their fans in 2024, but there are also opportunities to stand out and be seen. After January, will there be unexpected dark horses and surprises in the remaining days? Let's look forward to it together.

Author: Yue Yao; WeChat public account: Kas Data