An online celebrity from Muscial.ly poses for selfies with a group of fans at Local Video Day in Berlin in August 2016. (Photo provided to China Daily)
Inspiration for the startup came from an experiment to create an online music education product. Yang and his team wanted to make video-making and video-sharing an entertaining experience for the users.
"After receiving over 200 very encouraging emails from the early users in the U.S., we realized that the format that combines music, short videos and online social networking was really making a difference."
Soon after its launch, the app took off and kept going up, up, up, gaining tremendous popularity among U.S. teens, topping the app store charts, rubbing shoulders with Snapchat and Instagram.
"We then decided to hold our plans to enter other markets and focus solely on the U.S. market until the end of 2015. Then, we decided to expand to international markets," said Yang.
The U.S. remains the single largest national market for the startup－more than 35 percent of Musical.ly's users come from there. Europe collectively accounts for almost 40 percent of users. The startup said 70 percent of its users are females.
The nature of its user mix in terms of gender, age, language and culture, and its wide geographical spread, have sensitized Musical.ly to challenges that entail expansion and diversification of startups engaged in digital products.
To cope with the challenges, several small teams comprising two to three people each have been designated to facilitate localization in each major market, including the U.S., Europe, South America and Southeast Asia. They will track hot topics and create online activities accordingly, besides providing diversified local music.
All this costs money, but is also expected to make some. Future revenues are expected from online advertising and fees collected from its partners for promotional activities.
According to app tracker App Annie, video has become increasingly popular among social networking platforms during 2016.
In March 2016, Instagram announced that it would allow users to extend their videos to 60 seconds. Facebook launched Facebook Live for its users in April 2016 to make it easier to create and share live videos. Towards 2016-end, Twitter started allowing its millions of users to create and tweet live videos using hand-held devices like smartphones and tablets.
Ma Shicong, an analyst at Beijing-based internet consultancy Analysys, said the key challenge for Musical.ly is its imminent battles with Facebook and Twitter.
"Musical.ly has targeted overseas markets from its very beginning. With abundant experience, localization wouldn't be a big problem for it. However, due to (young) users' limited time and attention (span), the company will face fierce competition with the two major social networking platforms."
Yang said: "Musical.ly and Live.ly complement each other. Live.ly provides a real-time interactive experience, which is actually a great supplementary to what Musical.ly has been providing to the community. It also hugely broadens the content variety by its more flexible content format.
"We hope to become the first mobile entertainment platform that brings pop culture and young people all over the world together. On the one hand, it is the place where people meet and know interesting people globally. On the other, we are changing the entertainment-scape by re-defining the entertainment content format and enabling thousands of individuals and small studios to become great entertainers."
