TikTok’s Chinese version, Douyin, has on Monday launched an in-app mini game, which is very similar to social media giant WeChat’s namesake product.
TikTok is a media app for creating and sharing short videos, owned by ByteDance. PHOTO: Credit to ByteDance
TikTok’s Chinese version, Douyin (抖音), has on Monday launched an in-app mini game, which is very similar to social media giant WeChat’s namesake product.
The game, which is called “Yinyueqiuqiu”, allows users to play the game inside the Douyin app without downloading from app stores. The company plans to empower developers to launch such in-app mini games in the future.
TikTok is a media app for creating and sharing short videos, owned by ByteDance, the media app was launched as Douyin in China in September 2016 and introduced to the overseas market as TikTok one year later. It is a leading short video platform in Asia, the United States, and other parts of the world. In 2018, the application gained popularity and became the most downloaded app in the U.S. in October 2018.
WeChat launched its mini game on December 2017, which provides developers a great way to give a glimpse of a native game before inviting users to download the native App.
For example, you can find Memorial Valley on the WeChat’s mini game store. The mini game offers the first few levels of the full game, and then invite users to either pay and download the native app or share about the game (by sending animated mini-program cards) with their friends.
As the “sub-applications” within the WeChat ecosystem, the mini-program platform has been developed in various models, such as video mini-programs, music mini-programs, e-commerce mini-programs, bike-sharing mini programs, and more. Now, more and more mobile application developers are at work on WeChat mini-programs.
Six months after the WeChat’s mini game’s releasing, the data revealed by the company showed that over 2,000 mini games were submitted to the mini game store and over 450 million users have used at least one mini game.