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1. Introduction
A short video (SV) refers to a new video format with a length measured in seconds that primarily relies on intelligent mobile terminals for rapid shooting and beautification editing. It can be shared in real time on social media platforms. It is also called mobile social video, mobile SV, microvideo or small video (Chen et al., 2021). With the popularization of smartphones and the continuous improvement of the mobile network environment, SVs have quietly penetrated people’s studies, work and life. According to the 49th statistical report on China’s internet development, the number of SV users in China has reached 934 million, accounting for 90.5% of total internet users, with 53.5% of SV users watching SVs, and an average use time of 125 min daily (China Internet Information Center, 2022).
As a basic form of user expression and content consumption, SVs have contributed to the mobile internet’s main duration and traffic. It has become the primary application of the internet and the second largest network application after instant messaging. The strong demand of users for an SV has led to the continuous emergence of SV platforms (SVPs), from the early Weishi, Miaopai, Meipai, QQ Kandian and Sina Weibo SVs, to the popular Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili and Xiaohongshu recently, as well as many new SVPs, like Baidu Haokan, WeChat Video Channel and TikTok. The rapid growth in SVPs and users has attracted the attention of the library community. At least 161 public libraries and 18 university libraries, including many well-known libraries, such as the National Library of China, the Shanghai Library and the Sun Yat-sen Library in Guangdong Province (Gan and Zhang, 2021), have set up official accounts in three SVPs: Douyin, Kuaishou and Bilibili (Gong, 2021). As has been pointed out, many public libraries and university libraries have begun using SVs for publicity, promotion and service innovations (Gong, 2021; Tai, 2021). Consequently, in addition to WeChat, SV apps are expected to be used by libraries as additional service platforms and important marketing tools (Zhang and Chen, 2021).
Simultaneously, despite numerous choices, users’ switching behaviour between various SV apps is becoming increasingly frequent, resulting in some once-popular SVPs gradually falling into silence or even dying out after users’ switching. Therefore, exploring the switching behaviour of...