New interface, discovery algorithm, ambitious goals: after being discreet for years, the French video platform wants to assert itself on the social network market. By drawing heavily on TikTok.
Dailymotion, the French video platform, which seems to have been shut down for a few years, has just made an unexpected return to the social network ecosystem. This French “YouTube”, often considered the one who lost the battle against the American giant, owned by Google, presented a brand new interface strongly inspired by the social networks of the moment, starting with TikTok.
Maxime Saada, boss of the Canal+ group (owner of Dailymotion), described on Twitter the main lines of the video platform project, and displays very clear objectives, including more than a billion users within two years. In comparison, YouTube, the second most used social platform in the world, has around 2.5 billion users, including nearly 50 million French people.
Despite being forgotten by the general public, the platform had not quite disappeared: it notably offers its “player”, the interface for playing videos, on many websites, in white label.
New recipe
But to seduce, there is no longer any question of stopping there. Dailymotion has radically changed its interface to now offer vertical videos: this is the recipe for the application of short TikTok videos. A concept that has also been taken up by the majority of the most popular social networks. The media Spotters has also had the opportunity to test the publication of content on this new interface.
At first glance, they notice “better visibility compared to TikTok, probably due to less content being published.” However, due to the still low number of active users, “engagement (the act of liking or commenting, editor’s note) is much weaker there,” they said on Twitter.
But to carry out its ambitions, Dailymotion does not seem to have the intention of becoming yet another copy of TikTok. To go against TikTok or Instagram, which are singled out for enclosing their users in filter bubbles, by always showing them similar topics, the platform has chosen to highlight a so-called “crawl” algorithm. .
This “encourages the user to discover new subjects of interest by presenting him with content that does not yet correspond to an interest detected by the algorithm”, indicates the Dailymotion press release. A positioning which, if it proves conclusive, can really stand out, as traditional social networks such as TikTok and Instagram are criticized for this.
“What has particularly appealed to creators is our desire to develop with them an application where quality content is recognized at its fair value and where it is possible to interact more healthily with its audience”, declares Stéphane Godin, content director at Dailymotion.
In addition, the platform also offers interaction with “Reacts”, video reactions, or even surveys to ask the opinion of its subscribers. Concepts taken from different social networks. As of the date of the press release, published on May 11, Dailymotion reports that “more than 200 content creators have already created their profile”. From now on, time will show if the formula chosen by the platform manages to convince in the long term.
