抖音腾讯之争-抖音霸榜，惊出微信一身冷汗

A chart-topping music-video app is making WeChat sweat
音乐短视频应用抖音登顶苹果APP下载排行榜，让微信汗流浃背 

Douyin VS Wechat

A PUBLIC spat between two warring and wildly popular Chinese apps has had the feel of a teenage dance-off. “Sorry, Douyin Fans”, ran an article from the short-video app on its WeChat account, in which it accused the mobile-messaging service of disabling links to Douyin’s most popular videos. “All hail Douyin the drama queen,” retorted Tencent, WeChat’s parent, which said it had acted because the content was “inappropriate”.

抖音和微信，两个在中国炙手可热而又势成水火的app之间的公开口水战，却给人一种两个小朋友之间“尬舞”的即视感。

短视频APP抖音，在微信公众号中发布了一篇名为《抖音的朋友们，对不起》的文章，指责微信这个即时通信服务APP，屏蔽了抖音最火爆视频在微信平台上的链接。微信母公司腾讯反驳称“抖音是戏精”，腾讯表示，屏蔽抖音视频是因为其视频内容“不当”。

On June 1st Tencent sued Douyin’s parent company, Bytedance, for 1 yuan (15 cents) and demanded it apologise for its accusations—on its own platforms (and presumably without the snark). Tencent also alleged unfair competition. Within hours Douyin counter-sued for 90m yuan. Bytedance and Tencent later swapped accusations of tolerating smear campaigns against the other on their apps, and filed police reports about defamatory posts.

6月1日，腾讯起诉抖音母公司字节跳动，索赔1元人民币（15美分），并要求字节跳动在自家媒体平台上道歉（假定为非恶意中伤行为）。腾讯还宣称对方有不正当竞争行为。几小时内，抖音反诉腾讯索赔9000万元人民币。随后，字节跳动和腾讯相互控诉对方泼脏水式的抹黑行动，并向有关部门上报相关诽谤帖子。

Rarely has an upstart so piqued Tencent, a Chinese gaming and social-media titan which in November became Asia’s first company worth over half-a-trillion dollars. At first blush WeChat and Douyin (which translates as “trill”) appear to inhabit distinct worlds. The former is a super-app in which more than 1bn users not only chat but also order food, give to charity and pay utility bills. Douyin is a bottomless, eclectic feed of looped 15-second videos, a cross between Snapchat, Vine (now defunct) and Musical.ly, which Bytedance bought in November. The clips, shot by users, range from a dexterous noodle-maker in Chongqing to a shimmying peacock in a bamboo grove, all set to music.

近年鲜有新崛势力能如此惹恼腾讯。腾讯，是一家中国游戏兼社交媒体巨头。在今年11月该公司成为了亚洲首个市值超过5千亿美元的公司。乍看之下微信和抖音（译为“trill”）两者市场定位不尽相同，似乎各自占山为王两不相干。前者乃坐拥10亿用户的超级app，不仅能聊天，还能订餐、向慈善机构捐款、支付水电费等公用事业账单。抖音则是一个几乎无所不包的15秒短视频集合循环推送平台，集Snapchat，Vine（现已下线）及Musical.ly（Musical.ly已于11月被字节跳动公司收购）功能于一体；用户拍摄的视频从重庆心灵手巧的面条师傅，到竹林中摇曳多姿的开屏孔雀都有，这些视频都被配上了音乐。

Different though the services are, Bytedance’s use of artificial intelligence to create tailored offerings for each viewer on Douyin—and on Toutiao, a newsfeed—is winning attention. According to QuestMobile, a data vendor, in early 2017 users began to spend more time on Toutiao, Douyin and two other Bytedance video apps, Xigua and Huoshan, than they did on Tencent’s news and video offerings.

尽管旗下平台提供的服务不同，字节跳动公司利用人工智能为抖音用户提供贴合兴趣的视频内容，为头条用户推送定制的新闻，这让字节跳动声誉鹊起，迅速获得关注。数据供应商QuestMobile称，2017年初起，用户花在头条、抖音以及字节跳动公司的其他两个视频app—西瓜和火山上的时间，超过了花在腾讯新闻和视频上的时间。

In the first quarter of this year Tik Tok, an international version of Douyin that launched in late 2017, became the world’s most downloaded iPhone app, excluding games (see chart)—a rare feat for a Chinese social app. It has done well in Indonesia and Thailand. At home it led app-store rankings from January to May. It claims to have a user base of 300m in China, more than Kuaishou, another short-video app in which Tencent has a stake. Its appeal has prompted Communist Party outfits to set up accounts, and, on one occasion, state censors to place restrictions on it.

字节跳动于2017年末推出抖音国际版-Tik Tok，于今年第一季度成为了下载最多的非游戏类iPhone APP（如图），如此火爆对于一款中国社交app来说实属罕见。Tik Tok在印尼和泰国也取得不错成绩。在国内，抖音在1月至5月的app商店排行中一直领跑。抖音称其在中国拥有3亿用户，多于腾讯参股的另一个短视频APP快手。抖音的吸引力促使一些相关国家机构也注册了抖音账号，同时也引来相关审查部门开始对其设置限制。

All of which has provoked Tencent into providing a “defensive product”, notes Xue Yu of IDC China, a consultancy. In April Tencent resuscitated its short-video app, Weishi, a year after closing it. Its angst may stem from the fact that every firm wants “a top-of-mind app”, says Anu Hariharan of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup school, and a personal investor in Toutiao.

咨询公司IDC中国的Xue Yu表示，以上种种促使腾讯推出了一款“防御性产品”。今年四月，腾讯重启其已关闭一年的短视频app微视。来自硅谷创业学校Y Combinator的Anu Hariharan，也是头条的个人投资者，他表示，腾讯的焦虑或许来源于这样一个事实：每家公司都想要一个“用户心中第一的app”。

WeChat has hardly lost its oomph. A state agency recently reported that WeChat made up 34% of China’s total mobile-data traffic in 2017. To advertise, Douyin still relies on users sharing its videos on WeChat’s public feeds (hence its ire over the blocked videos). Still, the share of time spent by Chinese mobile users on messaging slipped from 37% to 32% in the year to March, says QuestMobile, while that spent on watching short-form video has risen from 1.5% to over 7%. Meanwhile, Douyin has introduced its own private-messaging function, further challenging WeChat.

然微信仍未失其魅力。国家机构近期报道2017年微信占据了中国移动数据总流量的34%。而抖音为了广告宣传仍需要依赖用户在微信平台的朋友圈中分享其视频（该公司才会因视频被屏蔽而大动肝火）。QuestMobile表示，截至三月中国移动用户在短信应用上花费的时间从37%下滑至32%，花在观看短视频上的时间则从1.5%增至7%。而同时抖音推出的私信功能，更进一步挑战了微信的地位。

In May an essay put out on WeChat by a former tech journalist lit up social media. In “Tencent Doesn’t Have a Dream” he argued that the firm had become chiefly an investment firm buying up other startups and had lost its innovative edge. One bit of evidence was that by the time Tencent had registered Douyin’s rise, its window for a counter-attack had all but closed. The naysayer claimed his treatise drew 1m views. Still, his readers all came to WeChat.

今年五月一名前科技新闻工作者在微信上发表的一篇文章引爆了社交媒体。在《腾讯没有梦想》一文中，他认为腾讯已经变成一家以收购其他创业公司为主业的投资公司，并丧失其创新优势。证据之一就是当腾讯注意到抖音的崛起后，反击之窗已经关闭。这位唱反调的作者称该文章浏览量过百万，而他的读者均来自微信。

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○dance-off：A competition, or a round in a competition, in which a number of dancers compete against each other until a winner is declared. “斗舞”或者“尬舞”

○drama queen：a person who tends to react to every situation in an overdramatic or exaggerated manner 作秀行家；小题大做的人

○snark： critical comments that are made in order to hurt someone's feelings; a comment of this type 刻意中伤的批评

○smear campaign: a deliberate plan to tell untrue stories about an important person in order to make people lose respect for them – used especially in newspapers 抹黑行动，指蓄意诽谤重要人物以损害其名声的行为，尤用于报纸上

○defamatory：Speech or writing that is defamatory is likely to damage someone's good reputation by saying something bad and untrue about them.“诽谤的” 

○outfit: You can refer to an organization as an outfit. 这里表示“机构”

○resuscitate:If you resuscitate something, you cause it to become active or successful again. “使复兴，复活”

○angst: strong feelings of anxiety and unhappiness because you are worried about your life, your future, or what you should do in a particular situation.“焦虑不安，烦恼”

○oomph：a quality that makes something attractive and exciting and that shows energy “精力，活力”