A screenshot of WeChat Moments has recently been rushed into the spotlight, showing a hot debate between China's veteran Internet magnate, Pony Ma, founder and CEO of Tencent Holdings and Zhang Yiming, a rising entrepreneur and CEO of Bytedance Inc., the company which owns the popular APP "Headlines Today."

On May 7, after Tik Tok, the international version of Bytedance Inc.'s short video product Douyin APP, earned top spot in Apple's APP Store by the number of global downloads, Zhang celebrated by posting a "moment" on his WeChat account.

Below the "moment," Zhang left a message, accusing Tencent of treating Douyin unfairly and plagiarizing what the new social media platform is doing.

Douyin can still make strides forward regardless of WeChat's boycott and the plagiarism it conducts with its Weishi (Tencent's short video spinoff), Zhang chastised.

Pony Ma of Tencent reacted.

"Your words can be taken as slanderous," refuted Ma in his reply to Zhang below the same "moment."

"Forget the boycott, which is not something appropriate to be discussed. The plagiarism is undergoing notarization. I don't want to wage a verbal war.... But I will send you the documents privately," Zhang protested.

"There's too much we can notarize against you. Besides, our platform always values the merits of equity, so you're just overacting," Ma replied.

According to the Beijing News, Tencent's PR Department responded to the dispute, saying that Weishi has always been encouraging and protecting original content and it welcomes reports of and will strongly deal with infringement, denying the accusation of plagiarism.

Bytedance Inc. did not respond to the dispute by May 9.

The argument between Zhang and Ma reflected the ever increasing competition between Weishi and Douyin.com for the lucrative market of short videos.

Tencent forayed into the arena five years ago in 2013 with Weishi, looking to tap into a niche market. However, about two years later, it announced a strategic abandonment of the product. In March, 2017, the conglomerate made a move to finance Kuaishou, a popular APP of micro videos, and officially put an end to the operation of Weishi, a month later.

During Tencent's absence, a burgeoning number of short video platforms including Douyin, Huoshan and Xiguashipin have gained ground and their success tempted Tencent to activate Weishi again in August 2017 for a low-key return.

Yet the prospects for Weishi seems challenging, as its rivals have grown stronger and the regulation more rigorous.

According to APP Annie, a San Francisco based consultancy of APP analytics and APP market data, in March, the top five Chinese short video platforms in terms of Monthly Active Users (MAU) are Kuaishou, Douyin, Quanminkge, Huoshan and Xiguashipin.

Li Yonglin, the managing director of Fortune Capital, a Shenzhen-headquartered venture capital institution, said for a content provider, the key for success is to rival for the time users stay tuned to its content.

Kuaishou and Bytedance are considered more aggressive in the rivalry than the conventional online goliaths, such as Tencent, Baidu and Weibo (microblog), he added.

According to iResearch, a consultancy of internet data research and analysis, the market size of short videos in China reached 5.73 billion yuan (US$904 million) in 2017, up 184 percent year on year. The scale of the market is expected to grow to 30 billion yuan by 2020.

"The landscape of the short video industry has not yet taken shape, as competition among different companies is still evolving," said Li Hao, CEO of www.huox.tv, a company which focuses on the provision of video content to new media.

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