ONE of YouTube’s biggest stars made his surprise debut on Chinese video service Bilibili on Tuesday (Jan 23), a rare incursion by a global influencer into a massive Internet arena that bans most Western social media.
Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast to his 230 million-plus YouTube subscribers, quickly got more than three million views and over 270,000 likes for a 90-second collage of some of his most viral clips.
“It’s going to be a fun ride,” Donaldson said in the video, asking Chinese viewers to tell him what they would like to see.
One user wrote: “I’m witnessing the history, hooray!”
Bilibili is a domestic streaming platform that competes with the likes of ByteDance’s Douyin.
Donaldson picked the platform for his Chinese online debut because it shares many similarities with YouTube, said Eyal Baumel, who is managing MrBeast’s rollout in China. The YouTuber plans to launch accounts on other sites including Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo and Xiaohongshu in the coming months, Baumel said.
