1.Abstract
With the popularity of short videos, the entertainment habits of internet users have begun to shift. Nowadays, more and more people prefer watching short videos during fragmented time, whether on the subway, bus, or in the afternoon. Short video viewing has become a significant part of people's lives. To better meet the growing demand for video quality from internet users, major short video platforms are constantly optimizing their internal systems and improving resources, helping to enhance the viewer's overall experience. Among these internal optimizations, the role of CDN (Content Delivery Network) has become increasingly significant, as CDN ensures the smoothness and stability of video playback. So, when purchasing a CDN, what functions should we focus on?
2.CDN Can Increase User Clicks
Nowadays, short video platforms not only rely on their content quality to attract users but also leverage big data recommendation algorithms to show users personalized content. This personalized recommendation enhances user retention and stickiness. Once users open the platform and quickly find content they enjoy, it increases click-through rates and viewing time.
If you're using a CDN, it plays a role in speeding up video loading and distribution. With the help of a CDN, video content can be stored on nodes closest to viewers, reducing network transmission time. This dramatically reduces video buffering time, significantly improving content display efficiency and quality. Faster loading speeds mean users can find content they love more quickly, which improves their experience and increases the click-through rate for videos. This, in turn, boosts platform activity and user engagement.
3.CDN Ensures Video Clarity
Videos not only need to load quickly but also need to be clear. Most users experience issues such as video buffering or reduced video quality when watching platforms like YouTube and TikTok, often due to insufficient network bandwidth or poor network conditions. This results in blurred images or automatic resolution adjustments, which significantly degrade the viewing experience.
Through CDN, video transmission becomes more stable and consistent. Additionally, CDN can intelligently adjust video resolution based on the user's network bandwidth, ensuring both video clarity and smoothness. Whether watching on a mobile phone with 4G or on a computer with broadband, using a CDN ensures that video quality remains high and avoids resolution degradation, offering the best possible viewing experience on different devices and networks.
If you're unfamiliar with deploying your own CDN, you can read my previous article for a detailed introduction on how to deploy a CDN.
4.CDN Reduces Buffering and Lag
Users often encounter the problem of "lag" and "buffering" on short video platforms. These issues typically disrupt video playback, causing sudden interruptions, page loading failures, or frozen images. This negatively impacts the viewer's experience and may lead to negative reviews or reduced user retention. These problems are especially common during peak viewing hours for live streaming or video-on-demand.
Without strong cloud servers and network configurations, video playback stability may be greatly compromised. The advantage of using a CDN lies in its load balancing and traffic distribution capabilities. The CDN can distribute traffic evenly across different servers, ensuring that the origin server remains stable even during high concurrent traffic periods. User requests are quickly directed to the nearest CDN node, ensuring a smooth experience.
5.CDN Improves Short Video Live Streaming Stability
In addition to video-on-demand, live streaming stability is even more critical. Users expect real-time responsiveness from platforms and smooth video playback at all times. Especially during live broadcasts of major events or breaking news, the number of viewers can be enormous. Without appropriate technical support, live streams are prone to disconnects, lag, and even interruptions.
The introduction of CDN technology can solve these problems. It can distribute live streaming traffic across multiple nodes, ensuring that, even with massive concurrent viewers, the live stream continues without interruptions. Through multi-node distribution, CDN guarantees smooth playback without server overload, preventing disconnections, lag, or stream interruptions.
6.CDN Provides Users with a More Stable Viewing Experience and Reduces Interruptions
Many people have experienced watching a video, only to encounter a network connection issue, causing the video to freeze or become unresponsive. This typically occurs when a platform's server cannot handle high traffic volumes, resulting in downtime, or when the connection between the viewer's location and the video origin server is unstable.
CDN's distributed structure effectively resolves this issue. No matter where the user is, the CDN ensures that service is provided through the nearest node, preventing interruptions caused by network problems and ensuring a stable viewing experience for every user.
7.Conclusion
The use of CDN is not just to increase video loading speed; it also enhances the user viewing experience. From improving video loading times to ensuring video clarity, smooth playback, and reducing live streaming interruptions, CDN plays a vital role in all these aspects.
For short video platforms, choosing the right CDN service not only enhances the platform's technical and performance capabilities but also improves user satisfaction, driving more traffic and engagement. Therefore, when purchasing a CDN, it is crucial to choose a provider that offers high-performance, low-latency, and high-stability services. It is also worth focusing on CDN services that provide nodes and optimized video distribution to offer users a smoother, clearer, and more stable viewing experience.