快手：为所有人打造的生活分享平台3（中译英）

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突破瓶颈——吹尽狂沙始到金

Breaking through the bottleneck –gold appears only after all sands are blown off

2013年以前的快手上主要有三类内容：美女自拍、小孩、宠物。刚开始看很吸引人，但时间长了就会觉得乏味，转型迫在眉睫。

Before 2013, the content on Kuaishou mainly included three kinds: selfie of beauties, kids and pets. Although such content was attractive at the beginning, they become boring to users after a period. So it was urgent to make a transition.

GIF快手转型做社区的第一步要在形成自己的流量和用户交互群体时把微博这个巨大的流量源断掉，然后再慢慢做流量，这个过程是很痛苦的。2013年刚转型时，快手的日活用户曾迅速从近百万跌落至一万，“那次上线，我们就突然转型了，短视频转GIF的功能藏起来，只支持直接上传短视频，用户打开一看，产品主要功能换了，旧功能找不到了，马上有人开始各种骂，‘这什么情况?’——因为不适应，用户一下走了90%以上。”面对用户急剧减少，宿华说：“不可惜，他们只是暂时的离开。” 果然，2014年春节后用户开始出现增长。2015 年1月，日活跃用户超过千万。“我们的改版从无声到有声，其实是在适应用户需求的正常发展。”宿华说。

The first step of GIF Kuaishou’s transformation was to cut off the huge flow source of Weibo when fostering its own flow and user group. Then the flow could increase slowly. This process was quite painful. At the beginning of the transformation in 2013, the daily active users of Kuaishou precipitously dropped from nearly a million to ten thousand. “We suddenly transformed in a release. We hid the video-GIF conversion function, and only allowed uploading of short videos. When users saw the change and could not find the old functionality anywhere, people began to complain. Then more than 90% of users left Kuaishou.” Speaking about the sharp decrease in users, Su Hua said: “It’s not an issue. They just left temporarily.” As expected, the user numbers started to increase after the Spring Festival of 2014. In January 2015, the daily active users of Kuaishou exceeded ten million. “Our change from silent video to sound video was actually a normal development to meet user demand,” noted Su Hua.

2016年，一篇微信公众号文章，将快手第一次曝光在所谓“精英阶层”的视线里，除了一些温馨快乐的生活视频外，这篇文章刻意强调了少数用户拍摄并上传的简陋、粗糙的内容。因此，快手被贴上了“低俗”、“底层”等标签。但是，宿华不认为依靠算法的软件应该做任何价值观倾向，快手没有刻意做用户下沉，“用户分布是自然形成的结果”，它真实反映了中国的人口结构，投射了真实的社会行为。

In 2016, an article in a WeChat public account shed light on Kuaishou to the so-called “social elite” for the first time. In addition to the some warm and happy videos taken in daily life, that article intentionally emphasized some simple and low-quality content taken and uploaded by a few users. Then, Kuaishou was hit with such labels as being “vulgar” and “bottom”. However, Su Hua thought that a software relying on algorithms should not have any inclination to certain values, and Kuaishou did not do anything to intentionally hinder user rankings. “The user distribution is a natural result,” and it faithfully reflects the population structure in China1 and presents the actual social activities.

从另一个角度看，“低俗”的另一面是乡村人需要表达与自我展现，这反而印证了快手“只关注普通人”的定位。在一二线城市中，人们可以轻松以自己的职业、兴趣爱好等话题在微博、知乎、豆瓣等社交平台上找到同道中人，即使不玩儿网络社交，一份体面的工作也足以让他们找到认同感。与此同时，农村人也渴望通过网络表达与刷存在感，但“主流”社交软件并没有给他们这样的机会。农村用户无法在主流社交媒体上找到认同感，主流社交媒体也从没向这个群体示好。快手的出现，让这个被“主流社会”“抛弃”的群体有了容身之所，不论是视频的制作者还是观众，都终于找到了同类人。快手的算法给了用户一次平等的受关注可能，农村网民都极尽努力想要抓住这种机会，就像营销大号为赚广告费熬夜写段子一样，它给了不论年龄大小、丑美的用户表达自己的机会。快手虽“俗”，但是真实。

It could be said that the other side of “vulgar” is the demand of the rural population for expressing and showing themselves from another perspective. This confirms the positioning of “paying attention to people only”. In first-tier and second-tier cities, people can easily find people with the same views on social networking platforms such as Weibo, Zhihu and Douban using topic searches relating to things like their occupations and hobbies. Even if they do not use social networking platforms, a decent job is enough for them to find a sense of identity. People in rural areas, meanwhile, also yearn for a sense of presence through Internet, but mainstream social networking software previously did not provide an opportunity to them. Rural users have traditionally found it difficult to find the sense of identity on mainstream social media, and such media has never shown kindness to this population. Kuaishou provides this population, abandoned by mainstream society, with a shelter, and both video makers and audiences are able to find people with the same values as themselves. The algorithm of Kuaishou provides users with an equal opportunity to build attention. Rural netizens have worked hard to seize this opportunity. Examples of this are owners of some big marketing accounts writing articles all through the night to earn advertising fee. It provides all users, regardless of age and appearance, with an opportunity to express themselves. Thus, even though it might be considered “vulgar”, it is “true”.

1、全国第六次人口普查数据显示，中国农村人口占比50.32%。

According to the results of the sixth national population census, rural population accounts for 50.32% of the total population of China.