From an ordinary person to the number one internet celebrity, is he the "chosen one" selected by the algorithm?

In 2022, with the "100 million yuan for buying a house" incident on the hot search, "Crazy Little Yang" finally ushered in unprecedented huge attention and career peak. Without the blessing of head companies and out-of-circle traffic, how did Crazy Little Yang, who was "born and raised" step by step on Douyin, reach the top of short video self-media traffic? This article deeply analyzes the success case of Crazy Little Yang, hoping to be helpful to you who pay attention to short videos.

It is said that TikTok is a world of algorithms, and algorithms determine everything. Countless operations experts are trying their best to figure out how to crack the rules of TikTok's algorithm.

"Live streaming, short videos, and e-commerce" are the three major means of Douyin's monetization. Being good at any one of them can make you famous on the Internet, but "Crazy Little Brother Yang" is an exception...

With over 100 million fans, he ranks first on the platform. Almost all of his short videos have received over a million likes, and his sales data are also among the best. He has become the only "multi-talented celebrity" on Douyin. He seems to have no shortcomings and can accurately guess the mysteries of the algorithm in every aspect.

He seldom participates in variety shows, is rarely seen in media reports, and has not even been in the official C position, so that today, his popularity is less than that of some top Internet celebrities.

But he grew up in Douyin and worked deeply in Douyin, creating a "Yang's Crazy Universe" here, quietly surpassing one well-known influencer after another, and his real influence and commercial value are far ahead.

Some people say that Crazy Brother Yang is the "Son of TikTok". He is the "chosen one" who was naturally selected through rounds of development and ecological enrichment of TikTok.

If it weren’t for the “100 million to buy a house” incident becoming a hot topic, the public might not know “Crazy Little Brother Yang”.

This internet celebrity, who started out by shooting funny short videos, is now undoubtedly a top celebrity on Douyin: he has over 100 million fans, ranking first on the platform; his short videos are almost all hits with over a million likes; his sales data is also among the top. In October, his GMV was second only to Oriental Selection, and in November he ranked third, second only to Oriental Selection and the Guangdong Couple.

However, Crazy Little Brother Yang doesn't seem to have much public influence.

Within Douyin, he is not like Dongfang Zhenxuan, Luo Yonghao, or even Liu Genghong, who are almost known throughout the entire Internet and are phenomenal IPs and celebrities; outside Douyin, he is not like Li Jiaqi of Taobao, Simba of Kuaishou, or Feng Timo of Bilibili, who are representative figures of the platform and have influence across the entire Internet.

Even at the official Tik Tok conference, he and the organization behind him did not have a seat.

At the Douyin e-commerce conference, the winners were Wuyou Media, Vision Entertainment and Yaowang Network, Dongfang Selection, the Big Wolf Dog Couple and Jia Nailiang. Crazy Little Brother Yang is more like an outsider independent of many halos.

He has almost never been interviewed, appeared on variety shows, or been on trending searches, but he has carved out a niche for himself on Douyin with his personal characteristics, from short videos to live streaming. He is a "chosen one" who is truly rooted in Douyin and has grown naturally in the Douyin ecosystem, quietly and far ahead of everyone else.

In 2018, when phenomenal internet celebrities emerged crazily on Douyin, he joined Douyin and created many popular videos; in 2019, the "Family Comedy" content took shape, and the "Desperate Weekend" series attracted tens of millions of fans; in 2021, he regrouped and entered the live streaming e-commerce industry, breaking through with his "reverse e-commerce" style of selling goods, and became Douyin's top e-commerce IP.

From an amateur to an internet celebrity, from a short video creator to a live-streaming host, and now to the establishment of an MCN and expansion of territory - Xiao Yangge's story of fame is the story of an ordinary person's rise to wealth in the era of live streaming short videos, and it also witnesses the changes in Douyin and the entire short video industry.

1. From amateur to short video expert

In 2015, Crazy Xiao Yangge registered an account and became a short video creator.

On January 26, 2016, Xiao Yangge released his first dance video titled "Dislocation" on Kuaishou. After that, he released many dance videos, including robot dance, break dance, and many blurry selfie videos.

The brothers Xiao Yang and Da Yang, who were born in rural areas and were left-behind children since childhood, reaped the early benefits of short videos after entering the short video field and quickly gained hundreds of thousands of fans.

The real masterpiece is "Ink Explosion". After this video went viral, the account's followers increased to 600,000 in an instant.

From the end of February, Xiao Yang started to create funny videos with prank content, and later he created his famous work "Ink Explosion". At that time, Xiao Yang seemed a bit "rustic" in both his personal image and the presentation of his works.

After accumulating 3 million followers on Kuaishou, Xiao Yangge joined Douyin in February 2018 to open up a new frontier.

At this time, a group of Internet celebrities such as Azhe, Feng Timo, Daigula K... have already stood at the top of the world and enjoyed great glory.

At first, Xiao Yangge continued his usual funny style. On February 7, 2018, Xiao Yangge released a video called "Daily Cowardice" on Douyin. In the video, Xiao Yangge's girlfriend raised her hand to hit Xiao Yangge, but in fact she was just pulling her hair. However, Xiao Yangge was so scared that he dropped his phone and hat.

In this video, the two of them didn't say a word, and there was no music. But Xiao Yang used body language to express his cowardice to the fullest, and the scene was very funny. Relying on his talent for comedy, Xiao Yang only updated 4 videos on Douyin and received millions of likes.

In 2019, his parents began to appear in the videos, and each of them began to have a clear role in the world of short videos: the younger brother who is addicted to the internet, the older brother who loves to play pranks on his younger brother, the middle-aged father who likes to look at beautiful women but is extremely afraid of his wife, and the mother who has absolute authority. Later, as Brother Yang got married, Sister Yang also began to appear in the videos.

As the characters increased and the content became richer, the account developed a series of short videos called "Desperate Weekend," all about how the younger brother is pranked by his older brother every weekend, which is hilarious.

On June 1, 2020, the number of followers of Crazy Xiao Yangge’s Douyin account increased to 29.11 million, and the number of followers increased by more than 15.18 million in the first half of 2020.

In the early days of the short video boom, people mostly watched short videos for fun, and many funny short video accounts emerged at that time, such as "Chen Xiang Six-thirty", which was started earlier and had a more professional production team, as well as Gui Ge, Zhu Xiaohan, etc., who also emerged in the Douyin funny track, and the Crazy Production Sisters who were later called the "female version of Brother Yang".

Brother Yang seized the golden age of increasing followers in the short video track.

2. Only traffic is not afraid of changes

But becoming popular quickly doesn’t mean you’ll stay popular forever.

The year 2018, when Crazy Brother Yang joined Douyin, was also the year when Douyin crazily created internet celebrities.

On TikTok, the topic #Return to 2018's TikTok is brought up for discussion again and again every once in a while, and has been played 3.16 billion times so far.

There are two types of early Tik Tok celebrities: one is based on appearance, represented by Fei Qiming, Liu Siyao, Wen Wan, Chengdu Xiao Tiantian, etc.; the other is based on talent, represented by Daigula K, Feng Timo, Modern Brothers Liu Yuning, Li Ge, M Ge, Guo Congming, etc., and the talent category is mainly focused on dancing and singing.

Under the decentralized recommendation algorithm, Douyin is like a machine that produces internet celebrities, one after another.

However, most of the Douyin influencers at that time were short-lived. They were once pushed to the forefront of Douyin's traffic storm, but soon returned to the shore with the ebb and flow of the tide, and only had a short "five minutes of fame".

The reason for this, in addition to algorithms and content, is also the change in the platform's direction.

Starting from the end of 2018, the trend of live streaming e-commerce began to pick up.

During the Kuaishou E-Commerce Festival on November 7, 2018, "Sanda Ge"'s live broadcast sales reached 160 million in one day, and the number of fans exceeded 43 million; on Double Eleven of the same year, Wei Ya's sales on that day reached 330 million, and the annual sales reached 2.7 billion.

During the Taobao 618 promotion in 2019, Li Jiaqi sold 5,000 Shiseido red waists in 3 minutes, with sales exceeding 6 million. In just half a year, he gained over 30 million fans on Douyin. On August 20, Simba started a wedding live broadcast on Kuaishou, with total sales reaching 130 million.

In 2019, Li Jiaqi became an internet sensation with the phrase "Oh my god!" and gained 25 million followers on Douyin in just half a year.

E-commerce anchors have begun to replace short video influencers and become the new traffic darlings.

On Douyin, many influencers and anchors have also begun to try to sell goods.

The first live streaming IP to appear on Douyin was "Pomegranate Brother". On August 20, 2019, "Lijiang Pomegranate Brother", who became an overnight sensation, started his first live streaming on Douyin. The sales lasted 20 minutes and sold more than 120 tons of pomegranates, with a maximum of 4,000 orders per minute, worth 6 million yuan.

After the live broadcast of selling goods ended, Shiliuge posted on his Moments, saying "Li Jiaqi is on Taobao, and no one on Douyin has surpassed my record yet."

This was the initial highlight of Douyin e-commerce, but it was only a moment. Shi Liuge did not take over this traffic, and soon fell silent, ultimately failing to carry the banner of Douyin e-commerce.

In 2019, Crazy Brother Yang also started to try e-commerce sales.

He founded "Lu'an Daxiao Yangge E-Commerce Co., Ltd." in the name of himself and his brother, but it did not make much splash. In just one year, the e-commerce company was cancelled.

It was in the first half of 2020 that the company actually started live streaming sales on Douyin, and the platform was Douyin. However, according to the sales data released by the team responsible for investment promotion, the sales data of Crazy Brother Yang, who had more than 40 million fans at the time, was not impressive, and the sales of many single products were only more than 1,000 orders.

Xiao Yang was very distressed. This was also the confusion of many short video influencers who had millions or tens of millions of fans at the time:

With so many fans, why can’t the products be sold?

Douyin launched the “shopping cart” in June 2018, but for a long time afterwards, Douyin still lacked an e-commerce atmosphere, and users still thought of Douyin as a short video platform rather than a shopping platform.

The infrastructure was not perfect and user habits had not been formed. At that time, no one thought that TikTok would become a giant in the e-commerce field.

While Douyin continues to accumulate content and polish its e-commerce methodology, Xiao Yangge also chooses to continue creating short videos.

As of December 13, Xiao Yangge has published a total of 125 works on Douyin, of which 31 videos have received more than 3 million likes and 3 videos have received more than 4 million likes. Except for a few videos with hundreds of thousands of likes when Xiao Yangge first started using Douyin in 2018, the likes of the rest of his works are almost all above 2 million.

Even if you fail in your attempt to sell goods, you cannot lose traffic!

3. Take advantage of the trend of bringing goods

Douyin insists on selling goods through live streaming, and Brother Yang has finally overcome the bottleneck of selling goods.

On October 31, 2019, the total number of fans of "Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng & Yan Zhen Couple" (Guangdong couple) exceeded 10 million. With the mentality of giving back to fans, they accepted the invitation of Douyin's official Double Eleven live broadcast and launched their first live broadcast.

On the evening of April 1, 2020, Luo Yonghao joined Douyin and completed his first live broadcast of selling goods on Douyin. The sales volume exceeded 110 million yuan in 3 hours, and the cumulative number of viewers reached 48 million, setting the highest sales record of Douyin at that time.

Luo Yonghao is the first real e-commerce IP created by Douyin. Starting from this live broadcast, Douyin e-commerce finally has a benchmark anchor.

Luo Yonghao's entry is also like a weather vane, telling all the influencers and anchors on the Douyin platform that the time has come to vigorously promote e-commerce and bring goods.

Nearly a year after Luo Yonghao joined Douyin, crazy brother Yang once again entered the live streaming world to sell goods.

At that time, both Tik Tok and he were no longer the same.

On March 18, 2021, Hefei Three Sheep Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established, with Zhang Qingyang (Little Yangge) as the legal representative. It was also from this time that Crazy Little Yangge began to appear frequently in the public eye, and at the same time attracted the attention of many people in the industry.

This time, Brother Yang made a lot of preparations:

First of all, with the entry of capital, the original operation team was changed, and the style and product selection of the entire live broadcast room changed.

When it comes to Crazy Brother Yang’s sales promotion, what people talk about most is his “crash”, “funny” and “directional” sales promotion style, which is the so-called “reverse sales promotion”.

For example, when selling slippers, they would bite the shoes off with their mouths; when selling durian cakes and screw noodles, they would eat and spit at the same time. The two brothers took the initiative to do things and brought about a "show effect".

Brother Xiao Yang brought the short video routine to the live broadcast room, and established a firm foothold in the live broadcast field with his unique "reverse sales".

Secondly, the funny clips of Crazy Brother Yang's live streaming were made into short videos and distributed by posting products on the Matrix account, which is what the industry calls "IP slicing."

This approach, on the one hand, improves the conversion rate of Crazy Little Brother Yang's traffic, and on the other hand, while increasing the team's sales revenue, it provides a new traffic entrance for Crazy Little Brother Yang's main account.

He came well prepared, and this time he finally rode the east wind and soared into the sky.

Xiao Yangge only conducts live broadcasts on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but despite this, he is still a frequent visitor to Douyin's monthly sales ranking T010. Feigua data shows that Xiao Yangge has conducted 63 live broadcasts on Douyin in the past six months, with live broadcast sales of 25-50 million and cumulative GMV of 1-2.5 billion.

During this period, the maximum number of viewers in Xiao Yangge's live broadcast room reached 63.78 million, the peak number was 1.948 million, and the highest GMV of a single game was 75 million to 100 million.

Compared with Dongfang Zhenxuan, which also broadcasts live on Douyin, Dongfang Zhenxuan's live broadcast sales in the past six months are 50-75 million, with a cumulative GMV of 2.5-5 billion. Although Dongfang Zhenxuan's live broadcast sales and sales are higher than Xiao Yangge, it should be noted that Dongfang Zhenxuan has conducted a total of 182 live broadcasts, which is three times more than Xiao Yangge.

Not only that, in this year's Double Eleven battle, Brother Yang became one of the top three live-streaming anchors on Douyin with a transaction volume of 450 million yuan. Ahead of him were the Guangdong Couple and Oriental Selection.

4. Becoming the "Chosen One"

Douyin has different types of top streamers at different stages:

• In 2018, it was the "younger brothers" and "younger sisters" who were mainly based on their looks and talents;
• In 2019, content experts emerged in various vertical tracks;
• In 2020, it was Luo Yonghao, Big Wolf Dog Zheng Jianpeng and other e-commerce anchors who brought goods;
• In 2021, many celebrities have flocked to the industry, and there have also been agriculture, rural areas and farmers experts like Zhang;
• In 2022, Liu Genghong and Oriental Selection became popular one after another, sweeping the entire network...

You will find that Crazy Xiao Yang Ge is not the most representative celebrity in every stage, but he is present in every stage.

He did not become silent after rapidly increasing his followers at a certain stage, but instead maintained the growth of his followers and reached a new high in the seventh year of his live short video career:

• From 2018 to 2019, the number of fans increased by more than 10 million;
• In 2020, the number of fans increased by more than 27 million;
• In 2021, the number of fans increased by more than 23 million;
• Since 2022, the number of fans has increased by more than 60 million

(Note: Does not include the data on lost fans, compiled based on the annual report data of Xinbochang and Feigua data)

Some people say that he has never been the top C-position star that Douyin has been pushing the most, but he is the "chosen one" that has been selected round after round in the process of Douyin's development and expansion and enrichment of its ecology. He constantly adjusts himself, adapts to the rules, accurately seizes every opportunity, and repeatedly extends his life cycle.

Celebrities like Luo Yonghao and Liu Genghong who have their own traffic are "airdropped". They use the traffic of Douyin to start new businesses and increase their popularity. Douyin also uses them to attract new users and expand its influence in the circle.

So after Douyin e-commerce grew and prospered, Luo Yonghao could just wave goodbye; and Liu Genghong's popularity on Douyin also declined, and his wife Viv even joined Taobao Live to open up a new track.

So, what about the celebrities who grew up on Douyin with Brother Yang?

The Guangdong couple is a native of Douyin. They also transformed from short video experts to live streaming anchors, and are now the top live streaming anchors of Douyin. However, they have now completely transformed into live streaming and selling goods, and the short video content has gradually weakened.

More top talents have gone...

Only Brother Xiao Yang, who grew up in Douyin and has been deeply involved in Douyin, has created a "crazy universe" here.

Only Brother Yang has become a "multi-talented celebrity" in the Douyin ecosystem - live streaming, short video and e-commerce have flourished in many aspects, perfectly fitting into the Douyin ecosystem.

From 0 to millions of fans, from millions of fans to tens of millions of fans, from tens of millions of fans to over 100 million fans; from an ordinary person to an internet celebrity, from an internet celebrity to a live streamer and entrepreneur...

How long will he remain popular? There is no answer.

All I know is that with someone as good as him in fitting the algorithm, it will be hard to find another Crazy Brother Yang on Douyin.

Apart from Tiktok, he no longer needs to prove himself.

Author: Xiao Hong, Xiao Long Guo

Source: WeChat public account "New Broadcasting Field (ID: New_bc)"