抖音式“無(wú)意義”短視頻能征服全球嗎？

A Chinese internet company that serves up homemade break-dancing videos, dishy news bites and goofy hashtag challenges has become one of the planet’s most richly valued start-ups, with a roughly $75 billion price tag. And it has big plans for storming phone screens across the rest of the globe, too.

一家提供業(yè)余霹靂舞視頻、八卦新聞報(bào)道和傻乎乎的標(biāo)簽挑戰(zhàn)的中國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司，已經(jīng)成為這個(gè)星球上最有價(jià)值的初創(chuàng)公司之一，估值大約為750億美元。它還制定了一個(gè)席卷全球其他地方的手機(jī)屏幕的宏大計(jì)劃。

You may not have heard of the company, Bytedance. You may never have used any of its breezy, colorful apps. But your nearest teenager is probably already obsessed with Musical.ly, the video-sharing platform that Bytedance bought for around $1 billion last year and folded into its own video service, TikTok.

你可能沒(méi)有聽(tīng)說(shuō)過(guò)這個(gè)叫字節(jié)跳動(dòng)的公司。你可能永遠(yuǎn)不會(huì)使用它那些輕松愉快、豐富多彩的手機(jī)應(yīng)用。但是你身邊的青少年可能已經(jīng)在沉迷于Musical.ly了，這是去年字節(jié)跳動(dòng)以10億美元收購(gòu)的視頻分享平臺(tái)，并且將它融入了自己的視頻服務(wù)TikTok。

“Frankly, it’s meaningless stuff,” said Dong Yaxin, 20, a college student in Beijing who says he is active every day on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Bytedance says that more than half a billion people worldwide use Douyin or TikTok at least once a month.

“說(shuō)白了，拍一些沒(méi)有意義的東西。，”20歲的北京大學(xué)生董亞欣表示，他每天都在使用TikTok的中文版抖音。字節(jié)跳動(dòng)表示，全球有超過(guò)5億人每月至少使用抖音或TikTok一次。

Cute pet videos. Lip-syncing to pop ear worms. Glossy digital effects ...

可愛(ài)的寵物視頻。對(duì)口型演唱流行入腦金曲。漂亮的數(shù)字特效……

... and people who are very good at doing the robot.

……以及非常擅長(zhǎng)跳機(jī)器舞的人。

“There isn’t such a strong sense of purpose on Douyin,” Mr. Dong said. “That’s actually what’s so good about it.”

“抖音的目的性沒(méi)有那么強(qiáng)，”董亞欣說(shuō)：“這個(gè)反而我覺(jué)得是一個(gè)很好的地方。”

But even for a purveyor of fluff, crossing the tech world’s most treacherous divide will not be carefree. There are two major internets right now: China’s and the rest of the world’s. Beijing’s tough rules on content and operations have long made China difficult, even impossible, terrain for American internet companies.

但即使對(duì)于膚淺娛樂(lè)的傳播者來(lái)說(shuō)，跨越科技界最危險(xiǎn)的鴻溝也不會(huì)是無(wú)憂無(wú)慮的?，F(xiàn)在世界上有兩大互聯(lián)網(wǎng)：中國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)和世界其他地區(qū)的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)。對(duì)于美國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司來(lái)說(shuō)，北京對(duì)內(nèi)容和運(yùn)營(yíng)的嚴(yán)格規(guī)定長(zhǎng)期以來(lái)令中國(guó)成為一個(gè)困難、甚至是不可能的地帶。

Those rules have also largely penned in homegrown titans like Tencent, whose overseas expansion plans have been hamstrung by the unique demands of catering to China’s online population.

這些規(guī)則也在很大程度上制約了騰訊等本土巨頭，其海外擴(kuò)張計(jì)劃因迎合中國(guó)網(wǎng)民的獨(dú)特需求而受挫。

So far, Bytedance — which recently secured $3 billion in new funding from SoftBank and other heavyweight investors — has found a rare measure of success in both internets by doing things a little differently.

到目前為止，字節(jié)跳動(dòng)最近從軟銀(SoftBank)和其他重量級(jí)投資者那里獲得了30億美元的新資金，它通過(guò)稍微有些不同的做法找到了在兩個(gè)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)取得成功的罕見(jiàn)方式。

For one, it is making no pretense to be bridging the two digital realms.

首先，它沒(méi)有假裝要彌合兩個(gè)數(shù)字領(lǐng)域。

Users of Douyin are entirely walled off from users of TikTok and vice versa; the better to manage the material that people in China can see. Beijing’s tightening controls have made these decidedly un-fun times to be in the business of fun.

抖音的用戶完全與TikTok的用戶隔離，反之亦然;這樣能更好地管理中國(guó)人能看到的素材。北京的緊縮控制措施使這些相當(dāng)無(wú)趣的事情進(jìn)入了這個(gè)靠玩樂(lè)掙錢的產(chǎn)業(yè)。

Video game companies, celebrity gossip bloggers and live-streaming stars have all been through the wringer recently as the government works harder to stamp out cultural content that it deems unhealthy or unwholesome. The crackdown has not spared Bytedance — the authorities ordered the company’s joke-sharing app offline in April this year.

視頻游戲公司、名人八卦博主和直播明星最近都在遭受磨難，因?yàn)檎优Φ叵麥缢J(rèn)為不健康的文化內(nèi)容。打擊行動(dòng)也沒(méi)有放過(guò)字節(jié)跳動(dòng)——當(dāng)局在今年4月下令，讓該公司的笑話共享應(yīng)用程序下線。

The company has also crossed borders with relative ease by focusing on light, affirming fare, and on attracting young — very young — users. But the Chinese Communist Party is not alone in having discovered a sordid side to Bytedance’s platforms.

該公司還通過(guò)專注于輕松、積極的內(nèi)容，以及吸引年輕——非常年輕——的用戶，從而相對(duì)輕松地越過(guò)邊界。然而，看到字節(jié)跳動(dòng)平臺(tái)骯臟一面的不只是中國(guó)共產(chǎn)黨。

Both before the company bought Musical.ly and since, horrified parents and others have reported finding adolescent users showing off suggestive dance moves on the app, mouthing lyrics about rough sex and worse. Police in Britain have investigated reports of adults propositioning children through Musical.ly.

在該公司購(gòu)買Musical.ly之前和之后，都有驚恐的父母和其他人報(bào)告，發(fā)現(xiàn)青少年用戶在該應(yīng)用程序上展示有性暗示的舞蹈動(dòng)作，說(shuō)出帶有粗暴性行為和更糟糕內(nèi)容的歌詞。英國(guó)警方調(diào)查了成年人通過(guò)Musical.ly向兒童提出猥褻要求的報(bào)告。

Bytedance added new privacy settings and parental controls to TikTok in June. But if the company, which declined to comment for this article, cannot expand its ability to manage such issues at the same rapid clip at which it is drawing new users, its products could become the bane of many more parents and governments in many more countries.

字節(jié)跳動(dòng)在6月份為TikTok添加了新的隱私設(shè)置和家長(zhǎng)控制。但是，如果該公司無(wú)法擴(kuò)大管理此類問(wèn)題的能力——公司拒絕為本文發(fā)表評(píng)論——同時(shí)又在迅速吸引新用戶，那么其產(chǎn)品可能會(huì)在更多國(guó)家成為家長(zhǎng)和政府的麻煩。

Their children might not care.

孩子們可能不會(huì)在乎。

Kang Sae-eun, 14, an eighth grader in Seoul, loves watching other young South Koreans on TikTok. There’s the girl who makes crazy faces, and the excellent dancer. There’s the cool girl with short hair — real “girl crush” material, she said.

14歲的姜世恩(Kang Sae-eun，音)是首爾的一名八年級(jí)學(xué)生，她喜歡在TikTok上觀看其他年輕的韓國(guó)人。有個(gè)很會(huì)做鬼臉的女孩，還有一個(gè)優(yōu)秀的舞者。她說(shuō)，有一個(gè)很酷的短發(fā)女孩——絕對(duì)是能“迷倒”女孩那種。

They are funny and uninhibited, Sae-eun said. And best of all, they are regular kids like her.

姜世恩說(shuō)，她們很有趣，不受約束。最重要的是，她們是像她一樣的普通孩子。

“It is much harder for young people like elementary school students to become famous on the better-known platforms, like YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, all of which I also use,” she said.

“對(duì)于像小學(xué)生這樣的年輕人來(lái)說(shuō)，在YouTube、Facebook或Instagram這樣的知名平臺(tái)上成名更困難，所有這些我也都在使用，”她說(shuō)。

Sae-eun said she didn’t realize that TikTok was made in China, which raises what might be the most interesting question about Bytedance: How did a company that is further democratizing self-expression come out of sternly undemocratic China in the first place?

姜世恩說(shuō)，她并沒(méi)有意識(shí)到TikTok是中國(guó)的，這引起了關(guān)于字節(jié)跳動(dòng)的最有趣的問(wèn)題：一個(gè)在推動(dòng)自我表達(dá)民主化的公司，是如何從一個(gè)極度不民主的中國(guó)誕生的呢?

Bytedance, which was founded in 2012, did not set out to dominate the market for bite-size videos. For many years, the company’s best-known product was not Douyin but a news aggregator called Jinri Toutiao, which uses machine learning to figure out what users like, then feeds them more of it.

字節(jié)跳動(dòng)成立于2012年，一開(kāi)始并不是為了主導(dǎo)短視頻市場(chǎng)。多年來(lái)，該公司最知名的產(chǎn)品不是抖音，而是一個(gè)名為今日頭條的新聞聚合器，它使用機(jī)器學(xué)習(xí)來(lái)弄清楚用戶喜歡什么，然后更多地提供它們。

In China, few media outlets command much loyalty among readers. That means an aggregator is a valuable and timesaving way to figure out what to read.

在中國(guó)，很少有媒體向讀者要求很大的忠誠(chéng)度。這意味著新聞聚合器是一種有價(jià)值且省時(shí)的方法，可以找出想閱讀的內(nèi)容。

After a while, though, Beijing realized that an app that gave people exactly what they wanted ended up giving them a lot of not-very-wholesome stuff.

不過(guò)，過(guò)了一段時(shí)間，北京意識(shí)到有一個(gè)應(yīng)用程序給了人們他們想要的東西，最后卻給了他們很多不那么健康的東西。

Last December, after China’s internet regulator accused Toutiao of spreading “pornographic” information, Bytedance halted updates to several sections of the app and removed or suspended hundreds of content creators. A few months later, Toutiao was temporarily removed from app stores for unspecified reasons. And Bytedance’s joke-sharing app, Neihan Duanzi, was shut down entirely.

去年12月，在中國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)監(jiān)管機(jī)構(gòu)指控今日頭條傳播“色情”信息之后，字節(jié)跳動(dòng)暫停了該應(yīng)用程序的幾個(gè)部分的更新，并刪除或暫停了數(shù)百個(gè)內(nèi)容創(chuàng)建者。幾個(gè)月后，由于不明原因，今日頭條暫時(shí)從應(yīng)用商店中刪除。字節(jié)跳動(dòng)的笑話共享應(yīng)用程序內(nèi)涵段子完全被關(guān)閉了。

In a lengthy letter of apology, the company’s founder and chief executive, Zhang Yiming, vowed to increase the number of employees moderating content to 10,000 from 6,000.

在一封很長(zhǎng)的道歉信中，該公司創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官?gòu)堃圾Q發(fā)誓要將管理內(nèi)容的員工人數(shù)從6000人增加到一萬(wàn)人。

“The product went astray, and content appeared that did not accord with core socialist values,” Mr. Zhang wrote.

“產(chǎn)品走錯(cuò)了路，出現(xiàn)了與社會(huì)主義核心價(jià)值觀不符的內(nèi)容，”張一鳴寫道。

By then, Bytedance had another rising star in its stable.

但那時(shí)，字節(jié)跳動(dòng)的馬廄里又有了一顆冉冉升起的新星。

Douyin was not even Bytedance’s first video app when it was released in 2016. But in the somewhat arbitrary, mildly mysterious way in which these things happen, it became huge.

抖音在2016年發(fā)布時(shí)甚至不是字節(jié)跳動(dòng)的第一個(gè)視頻應(yīng)用程序。但是，在這些事情發(fā)生的過(guò)程中，它以某種隨機(jī)而又有些神秘的方式，開(kāi)始變得龐大。

The app is engineered for swift, maximal addictiveness.

該應(yīng)用程序?qū)榭焖俣畲蠡某砂a而設(shè)計(jì)。

Open Douyin or TikTok and you are plunged right into a video. Swipe up to get another, each refresh of the screen providing a dopamine jolt. The videos fill your phone display entirely, blocking the clock at the top and preventing you from seeing how many hours you have spent watching puppies and comedy skits and synchronized dancing.

打開(kāi)抖音或TikTok，你就會(huì)直接進(jìn)入一段視頻。手指向上滑動(dòng)就可以獲得另一個(gè)，每次刷新屏幕，都是一陣多巴胺快感。這些視頻完全填滿了你的手機(jī)顯示屏，擋住了頂部的時(shí)鐘，讓你無(wú)法看到自己花了多少小時(shí)觀看小狗、喜劇小品和整齊的舞蹈。

Satsuki Hatashita, a 20-year-old college student in western Japan, has been hooked for months. She now knows not to use the app before taking a shower. “I wouldn’t be able to shower for a long time, until I finally stopped watching TikTok,” she said.

日本西部20歲的大學(xué)生畑下五月(Satsuki Hatashita，音)已經(jīng)連續(xù)數(shù)月迷戀這個(gè)應(yīng)用。她現(xiàn)在才明白，洗澡之前不要使用這個(gè)應(yīng)用。“我會(huì)有很長(zhǎng)一段時(shí)間無(wú)法去洗澡，直到我終于停止看TikTok，”她說(shuō)。

She, too, was surprised to learn that the app was Chinese.

她也驚訝地發(fā)現(xiàn)這個(gè)應(yīng)用是中國(guó)的。

People like Ms. Hatashita have given Bytedance confidence in its march overseas. The company has opened offices in Japan, Brazil, India, the United States and beyond.

像畑下這樣的人給了字節(jié)跳動(dòng)向海外進(jìn)發(fā)的信心。該公司已在日本、巴西、印度、美國(guó)及其他地區(qū)開(kāi)設(shè)辦事處。

Still, Chinese staff stationed in China oversee significant aspects of Bytedance’s international apps. They even produce some culturally specific content, such as push notifications suggesting videos to watch. The company is hiring speakers of more than a dozen languages, including Portuguese, Polish, Malay and Arabic, for positions in China, according to an online posting.

字節(jié)跳動(dòng)國(guó)際應(yīng)用的重要方面仍然由駐留在中國(guó)的中國(guó)員工負(fù)責(zé)。他們甚至?xí)谱饕恍┽槍?duì)不同文化的內(nèi)容，例如建議觀看視頻的推送通知。據(jù)在線發(fā)布的消息，該公司正在招聘十幾種語(yǔ)言的使用者，包括葡萄牙語(yǔ)、波蘭語(yǔ)、馬來(lái)語(yǔ)和阿拉伯語(yǔ)。

An episode this year points to the importance, for Bytedance, of having people on the ground in at least one area: government relations.

今年的一件事讓字節(jié)跳動(dòng)明白，至少在政府關(guān)系這個(gè)領(lǐng)域，在當(dāng)?shù)赜腥宿k事是很重要的。

In July, the authorities in Indonesia temporarily blocked TikTok for hosting what they called “pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy.” The Indonesian government had contacted TikTok’s Singapore office to give a few days’ warning. But it didn’t receive a response until after the app was shut down, Rudiantara, Indonesia’s minister of information, said in an interview.

7月，印度尼西亞當(dāng)局暫時(shí)屏蔽了TikTok，因?yàn)樗峁┧麄兯^的“色情、不恰當(dāng)?shù)膬?nèi)容和褻瀆行為”。印度尼西亞政府聯(lián)系了TikTok的新加坡辦事處，發(fā)出了幾天的警告。但是，印度尼西亞信息部長(zhǎng)魯?shù)习菜?Rudiantara)在接受采訪時(shí)表示，直到該應(yīng)用被關(guān)閉后，政府才收到回復(fù)。

Bytedance’s recent hires suggest that it wants to avoid similar incidents. Instagram’s head of public policy for the Asia-Pacific region, Helena Lersch, recently resigned to become Bytedance’s director for global public policy. Facebook’s public policy leads in Indonesia and Japan recently left to join Bytedance, too.

字節(jié)跳動(dòng)最近的招聘活動(dòng)表示，它希望避免類似的事件。Instagram的亞太地區(qū)公共政策主管海倫娜·萊爾施(Helena Lersch)最近辭去職位，擔(dān)任字節(jié)跳動(dòng)的全球公共政策主管職務(wù)。最近，F(xiàn)acebook在印度尼西亞和日本的公共政策主管也加入了字節(jié)跳動(dòng)。

Before Douyin took off, China’s internet didn’t have a reigning social platform dedicated to short, easy-to-make videos. In the rest of the world’s internet, where Instagram, Snapchat and others are already popular, TikTok faces stiff competition.

在抖音騰飛之前，中國(guó)的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)并沒(méi)有一個(gè)專注于簡(jiǎn)短、易于制作的視頻并且獨(dú)占鰲頭的社交平臺(tái)。在世界其他地方的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上，Instagram，Snapchat和其他類似平臺(tái)已經(jīng)很受歡迎，TikTok面臨著激烈的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)。

For Tao Ni, a 25-year-old newspaper reporter in eastern China, Tencent’s messaging app WeChat has already become more of a tool for work than a fun way to kill time. Weibo, a popular Twitter-like platform, can be wearying. But not Douyin, Ms. Tao said.

對(duì)于中國(guó)東部25歲的報(bào)紙記者陶倪來(lái)說(shuō)，騰訊的消息應(yīng)用程序微信已經(jīng)成為一種工具，而不是一種消磨時(shí)間的有趣方式。微博是一個(gè)類似Twitter的流行平臺(tái)，它可能會(huì)讓人厭倦。但是陶倪說(shuō)，抖音卻絕對(duì)不會(huì)。

It’s because each video is so short, she said, that she can end up spending hours on what amounts to channel-surfing. “Anything longer than 15 seconds, and I might start to feel tired.”

那是因?yàn)槊總€(gè)視頻都很短，她說(shuō)，她最終可能花費(fèi)幾個(gè)小時(shí)瀏覽各個(gè)頻道。“超過(guò)15秒的就可能會(huì)覺(jué)得疲勞。”