ShareChat’s 2020 UGC Trends Report highlights content behavioral trends among Indic language users

ShareChat, India’s leading social media platform today released its 2020 year-end UGC Trends Report.  The report highlighted key conversations and content drivers as reflected in the content shared on the platform. The content consumption patterns that have emerged during 2020 as divulged by ShareChat’s 160 million, monthly active strong user community. 

In 2020 amidst a global pandemic, ShareChat users uploaded over 750 million user-generated pieces of content, resulting in 24 billion WhatsApp shares.  Hindi users led content creation with a 26% contribution while the Tamil users led WhatsApp shares with 24%.

Covid-19 induced lockdown and physical distancing impacted the community’s behaviour on the platform, as users engaged more on ShareChat during and post the lockdown. The average user time spent daily on the platform increased from 24 minutes pre-lockdown to 31 minutes post the lockdown.

Covid-19 impact

While the world was in a state of lockdown, ShareChat witnessed a changing consumption pattern, as reflected by the community’s overall interaction with the digital world. In a bid to keep themselves updated with the latest developments, our community pushed ‘News’ amongst the Top five content genres. The trend withstood even after the lockdown phase, as digital consumption of news gained popularity. 

Amidst Covid-19, when users were limiting real-time interaction while following social distancing norms, they took to ShareChat to celebrate their religious festivals in full vigour. Devotion has been a favourite content genre since last year, but this year the content revolved around saving the world from the pandemic and wishes for festivals.

Consumption pattern

Greetings and Status continued to dominate the charts, making up 23% of content posts, while Romantic and Entertainment content followed with 14% and 12% content share respectively. Devotional content stood at fourth place with 8% share, while News entered the top five category with 7.5% content share. This trend has been mostly similar amongst both men and women users.

The report also brought to the fore the Top Moments of the year. Covid 19 and conversations around the life-altering global pandemic led the list. This was followed by conversations around Sushant Singh Rajput’s demise, ban on Chinese apps, IPL and the rebuilding of the Ram Mandir. 

IPL was trending in a few Indic languages with ShareChat’s users supporting their local teams. Bengali, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Marathi users cheered for their teams and put IPL amongst the top five moments of the year in their respective languages.

Regional trend

Certain regional developments and events were also seen trending in relevant languages – 

• Lohri and Farmers’ protest in Punjabi
• Onam, SP Balasubramanium’s demise and Soofiyum Sujathayum (First Malayalam OTT Movie Release) in Malayalam
• Chiranjeevi Sarja Demise in Kannada
• Nivar Cyclone and Actor Thavasi Demise in Tamil. Even Big Boss trended in the language mostly due to the popularity of Big Boss Tamil
• Namaste Trump in Gujarati
• Durga Puja in Bengali

Growing appetite for video

Video content has become increasingly popular on ShareChat. Previously the community’s engagement with video content was constant but this changed during the lockdown. From a 6:4 ratio of video to image content consumption during the lockdown, it increased to a striking 7:3 post the lockdown.

Over 700 million hours of video content was consumed on the platform during the year, with 30,000 hours of videos uploaded on ShareChat daily. Our users spent an average of 25 seconds with every video play. Telugu users favoured video content the most in their interaction on the platform almost 70%, while Marathi users skewed the most towards images 40%, with video being 58%.

Gender split

While the ShareChat community was represented by 68% men, more men joined the platform post the lockdown taking the male presence to 77%. However women have contributed significantly with 42% in content shares, post the lockdown. It has also been noted that female share in content creation (41%) was more than their presence (32%) on the platform throughout the year.

Top cities

While the ShareChat community is spread across 200000 pin codes from 1000+ cities, here are the top five cities:

• Bengaluru Urban*
• Pune*
• Ranga Reddy
• Tiruvallar
• Kanchipuram

* This does not only represent a specific language due to its cosmopolitan nature

Creators

2020 also witnessed the rise of creators on ShareChat, reporting a total number of 28 million creators, who led conversations and trends, entertaining and inspiring the larger community. Interestingly, there are eight women amongst the Top 10 creators on the platform, stating that women are engaging better with their audiences. Tamilselvan from the Tamil language has emerged as the top creator with over 41 million engagement, while C. Malini from Tamil topped the female creator list and overall, ranked second with over 36 million engagement on her content.

Here is the Top 10 creators list:

• Tamilselvan (@161229tamil) – Male, 41+ millions engagement**
• C. Malini (@267922074) – Female, 36+ millions engagement**
• Kali (@stylishstatus) – Male, 20+ millions engagement**
• Neelu (@37neelu) – Female, 16+ millions engagement**
• Rasabathula Manga (@manga2154) – Female,15+ millions engagement**
• R. Hamsika (@hamsi_23) – Female, 11+ millions engagement**
• Ruhmeet Dhillon (@meet500) – Female, 10+ millions engagement**
• Soundarya (@soundaryasandu) – Female, 10+ million engagement**
• Shaheen Shaikh (@s__creation) – Female, 8+ millions engagement**
• Rupa (@rupa_creations) – Female, 8+ millions engagement**

Identical trends were revealed in most languages, with women taking one or more spots among the top three creators.

Top five male creators of 2020 were:

• Tamilselvan (@161229tamil) – 41+ millions engagement**
• Kali (@stylishstatus) – 20+ millions engagement**
• Noufal VN (@alnoufcreations) – 7+ millions engagement**
• Tejas (@t110964847) – 7+ millions engagement**
• Sarbjit Singh (@sarbjit8) – 6+ millions engagement**

Top five female creators of 2020 were:

• C. Malini (@267922074) – 36+ millions engagement**
• Neelu (@37neelu) – 16+ millions engagement**
• Rasabathula Manga (@manga2154) – 15+ millions engagement**
• R. Hamsika (@hamsi_23) – 11+ millions engagement**
• Ruhmeet Dhillon (@meet500) – 10+ millions engagement**

**Engagement is measured based on two factors:

• Content shared
• Likes and comments on content

Commenting on the 2020 Trends Report, Shashank Shekhar, Director – Content Strategy, ShareChat, said, “ShareChat represents the diversified demography of India and displays varied content behaviour across 15 Indic languages. The ShareChat 2020 UGC Report gave us an insight into our community’s interaction in their primary language on the digital platform. The report also reiterates ShareChat’s strength in exploring hyperlocal capabilities and empowering its community to drive differentiated conversations across Indic languages.”

This year onwards, ShareChat recognised its top creators who have been instrumental in driving engagement on the platform.

“Our creators are the core strength of the platform. We would like to congratulate them for building such a lasting connection, displaying their talents, and inspiring others with their passion.” Shekhar further added.

You can access the full report here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ev4grzTJykm2rXpeMPnxlDWkHbWb9TUz/view

Disclaimer: Information mentioned here has not been verified or endorsed by Agency Reporter and is in accordance with the press release shared by the company or their appointed representatives.