Jan. 22 (NBD) -- The battle for the content creators has started among internet giants in China since the beginning of 2018.

While China's internet titan Tencent and the popular news app Jinri Toutiao released last Tuesday the new revenue sharing strategies to raise content authors' income, another leading technology company NetEase also made an announcement that it will increase 1.5 billion yuan (234 million U.S. dollars) subsidies two days later. 

Net Ease further disclosed that two thirds of the total amount will be used to as subsidies for short videos and multi-channel network (MCN), with more resources for MCN and the remaining 500 million yuan (78.0 million U.S. dollars) for those authors who produce images and articles.

Photo/PEXELS

At the same day of NetEase's news, Baijiahao, the technology giant Baidu's content publishing and management platform, announced its plan to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) aided writing platform named Creating Brain, and also the measurements to support short video authors as well as the Million Yearly Salary Plan.

According to Baidu, the Million Yearly Salary Plan will help a group of outstanding content creators to gain a salary of over one million yuan (155,977 U.S. dollars) by offering one-on-one exclusive service, adding resources, brand design and other policies. 

While creators will have access to various creating materials for free, they can also convert long videos into short ones by using the function of automatic online videos interception.

The platforms' unprecedentedly high value on the content makers was led by the growing number of users. 

According to the Mobile Internet 2017 Autumn Report release by big data service provider QuestMobile, the number of monthly active users China's short video industry has climbed to 302.75 million in September 2017, up 94.1 percent from 155.95 million in September a year earlier. 

Last year, the user number of independent short video app industry has reached 410 million, with a year-on-year rise of 116.5 percent.

It is noted that besides content creation, Baidu also attaches great importance to content distribution.

Xiang Hailong, senior vice president at Baidu, said last Thursday that the Mobile Baidu app will be renamed Baidu app since its latest version was published. The new move indicates that the giant will no longer be a search engine only, but become a tool which provides information for users to read at any time. 

When Li described the changes brought by the recommendation and display methods based on the mobile app's new algorithms, he said that the traditional way of search in the past is users seeking for information, but now the information should conversely come to users. When people don't actively express their demands for information, the app could still dope out those contents that they like or need.

However, Baidu will gain revenues mainly from the search and content distribution services in the short term, although it frequently voices its AI strategy. 

In essence, the content distribution is the key service for Baidu, Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu, noted in a letter written to the company's employees.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn