Hongguo Short Drama has suspended the release of new content, but it hasn't stopped running at full speed.

Text | Lan Jie

Editor | Qiao Qian

In late 2024, the Network Audiovisual Department of the National Radio and Television Administration and the Beijing Radio and Television Bureau jointly summoned the main person in charge of Hongguo Short Drama (referred to as "Hongguo") under ByteDance, indicating that Hongguo had not fully implemented the three management reminders issued by the National Radio and Television Administration - regulating middle-aged and elderly-themed, "dominant CEO" type micro-short dramas, and the titles of micro-short dramas.

In fact, as early as one month prior, the industry had already responded to the relevant regulations of the National Radio and Television Administration. Many short drama producers began to avoid related themes or renamed the original dominant CEO short dramas and put them back online. However, Hongguo failed to timely avoid related issues, which to some extent indirectly confirmed that its rapid growth is difficult to halt.

Shortly thereafter, Hongguo responded through its official account, stating that it will further enhance the review system and that it will cease launching new episodes within 5 days from the present.

Being summoned and temporarily halting the launch of new dramas are only minor incidents for Hongguo.

Previously, some media reported that Hongguo's original user scale target was to have 50 million daily active users by the end of 2024, but this goal has been rapidly achieved, so it has set a new goal of 100 million daily active users by the end of the year.

According to the relevant data released by QuestMobile, in September 2024, Hongguo ranked first on the TOP list of App user scale growth (billion-level) with 120 million monthly active users (MAU) and a year-on-year growth of 1045.86%, and is in a leading position among a group of short drama Apps.

It took Tomato Novel four years to achieve a daily active user base of nearly 100 million and a monthly active user base of nearly 200 million, while it took Hongguo just over a year to be on the verge of catching up with this achievement.

The Hongguo Short Drama "Grown" from Tomato Novel

In terms of content, team, and business model, Hongguo Short Drama and Tomato Novel can be said to be in the same vein. A person in the online content industry who is familiar with Hongguo told 36Kr that Hongguo is a business line of Tomato. When Hongguo was established, many of its staff were transferred from Tomato Novel.

To a certain extent, Hongguo Short Drama is an extension of Tomato Novel, and the former's success is also based on Tomato Novel.

Some industry insiders stated that among the hit short dramas of the short drama production companies that have long-term cooperation with Hongguo in the past year, the proportion of Tomato Novel IPs is very high.

Take Yuanshang Muguang Film and Television Media Co., Ltd., which has produced many hit short dramas, as an example. Its representative short dramas such as "Oh! The Empress Comes to Work" and "President Li, You've Got the Wrong Wife" can be found on Tomato Novel, and its cooperation with Hongguo is also quite close.

It is not difficult to discover that many short dramas on the Hongguo Short Drama App also originate from the original IP of Tomato Novel.

Due to this, a short drama company that mainly focuses on the Hongguo platform told 36Kr that it feels a bit of "content monopoly" on the platform, specifically manifested as short dramas adapted from Tomato Novel being more easily launched and more likely to benefit.

On the creative side, Tomato Novel has also directly opened up the connection path with short dramas - some authors whose themes are permitted and whose work data and quality performance are good can directly adapt their IPs into short drama scripts in the writer's area of the Tomato Novel website, putting two incomes in one pocket. Correspondingly, many online novel writers have successfully transformed into short drama screenwriters and shared their monthly income of over 100,000 yuan on social platforms.

Not long ago, Hongguo Short Drama also announced the single-month "script revenue sharing" amount for November 2024, which exceeded 26 million yuan. Last June, Hongguo first disclosed that the revenue sharing amount exceeded 100 million yuan, in September it exceeded 200 million yuan, and in November it reached more than 300 million yuan.

Hongguo is to Tomato Novel what Tencent Video is to Yuewen, increasing the channels for IP monetization, including some mid-range IPs that are difficult to be adapted into film and television dramas, thereby also increasing the profit space.

For Hongguo, with Tomato Novel as a rich content mine, it can enrich the platform content and minimize the cost brought by IP copyrights. The probability of IPs verified by Tomato Novel becoming popular again in short dramas is also higher.

Yuan Zichao, the person in charge of copyright cooperation for Hongguo and Tomato Novel, said in November last year that currently, Hongguo launches more than 1,000 short dramas every month, and a total of more than 15,000 short dramas have been launched.

The development company of Hongguo is Beijing Bimoliuxiang Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Bimoliuxiang"), the current legal representative is Mo Shaojun, and the former legal representative is Zhang Chao. And Zhang Chao is the person in charge of Tomato Novel and Toutiao business under ByteDance.

This makes it not difficult to understand why Hongguo resolutely chose the free model when paid short dramas were in the mainstream, and took advertising as the main source of income, promoting the rapid expansion of the platform.

Quickly replicating the business model of Tomato Novel, Hongguo took a shortcut.

A Member of the ByteDance Family

Some media reports stated that ByteDance has provided Hongguo with a great deal of traffic and commercial support. Traffic has always been a powerful tool for ByteDance's products, but if the reason is simply attributed to traffic, it is not sufficient to explain the rapid growth of Hongguo.

The more essential reason is that Douyin can be regarded as a short drama platform to a certain extent - according to QuestMobile data, in October 2024, the penetration rate of short drama content on the Douyin platform reached 66.1% - which means that it and Hongguo have highly overlapping users.

At the same time, Douyin also has precise traffic promotion methods. A person engaged in the traffic promotion of short dramas told 36Kr that Douyin will label and classify different users and video contents, and the labels are very detailed. From her experience, whether this short drama belongs to the male or female frequency, and whether the theme is a flash marriage or a tragic love, the platform can accurately divide and deliver it.

Hongguo itself is also making great efforts in the placement of ByteDance's products. According to the data of ADX Industry Edition in November 2024, in the past 90 days, the main placement channels of "Hongguo Short Drama" are穿山甲联盟 (an advertising platform under ByteDance), Xigua Video, Tomato Novel, Toutiao, etc. As of November 4 last year, Hongguo has placed more than 2.13 million + groups of materials, making it top the App Store Free List for 19 days.

In order to ensure user retention and activity, Hongguo adopts the old method of ByteDance's products, that is, users can receive gold coins by watching short dramas, watching advertisements, etc., and can withdraw cash after accumulating to a certain amount.

Relying on advertising as the main revenue, Hongguo is also trying to balance the advertising load and user experience as much as possible, and will not insert advertisements in short dramas at the beginning. Many users said that advertisements will appear after watching short dramas for about six hours.

In addition, like Tomato Novel, Hongguo has set up an entrance to Douyin E-commerce inside, which can amplify the traffic of Douyin E-commerce and also provide an additional monetization channel for the former two. Previously, "LatePost" reported that for innovative businesses, ByteDance is increasingly focusing on their synergy with the "main trunk businesses". In layman's terms, it is to see whether a business can assist each other with Douyin and Douyin E-commerce, the two main trunk businesses.

Just like the emergence of Tomato Novel, which reconstructed the business model of the online novel industry, the emergence of Hongguo is also reconstructing the business model of the short drama industry.

The IP moat that traditional leading online novel companies represented by Yuewen Group adhere to has been broken by Tomato Novel. Last year, Tomato Novel produced online novel masterpieces such as "The End of Ten Days" and "I Learned to Slay Gods in a Mental Hospital", and successively reached adaptation cooperation with Tencent Video and iQIYI.

Now the emergence of Hongguo has made the spear of Tomato series products attacking Yuewen and even Tencent Video even sharper. In fact, almost all long-video platforms have shown anxiety brought by short dramas, adopted a defensive posture, and started making ten-minute short dramas. The increasingly shorter TV drama episodes are also one of the examples.

Not long after Hongguo suspended the launch of new content, on January 7, ByteDance announced new progress in short dramas - it has established an overseas short drama business team and has launched a short drama APP called "Melolo" overseas, also featuring a free model. After briefly pressing the pause button, ByteDance's short drama business is still running at full speed.