- TikTok’s Owner ByteDance Pushes a Lemon8 App in U.S. The New York Times
- TikTok ban backup plan? ByteDance-owned Instagram rival Lemon8 hits the US App Store’s Top 10 TechCrunch
- Instagram Meets Pinterest: TikTok Ban Could Be Coming, Parent Company ByteDance Might Have An Answer With Lemon8 – Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), PDD Holdings (NASDAQ:PDD) Benzinga
- ByteDance’s Photo App Lemon8 Soars into US Charts as TikTok Faces Ban PetaPixel
- With TikTok US Ban likely, ByteDance launches alternate, Insta-like app, run pricey promo campaigns Firstpost
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: ByteDance
China Plans New Restrictions in Its Booming Live-Streaming Sector
SINGAPORE—China is planning new curbs on the country’s $30 billion live-streaming industry, according to people familiar with the matter, renewing a regulatory campaign aimed at reining in technology companies and exerting greater influence over the content consumed by its young people.
Chinese authorities are drafting new regulations to cap internet users’ daily monetary spending on digital tipping, said people familiar with the situation. Officials are also planning to set a daily limit on how much live-streamers can receive from fans and are considering imposing tighter censorship over content, some of the people said.
ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming steps down as chairman amid reshuffle
Sheldon Cooper | LightRocket | Getty Images
GUANGZHOU, China — ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has stepped down as chairman, as the company continues to reorganize its business, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told CNBC.
ByteDance owns TikTok, the wildly popular short-video app.
Zhang announced his resignation as the CEO of ByteDance in May and said he would move into a strategy role this year.
Liang Rubo, who took over as CEO, will now also take up the role as chairman.
ByteDance declined to comment when contacted by CNBC.
The move comes after a huge reorganization at ByteDance this week. Shou Zi Chew, who joined ByteDance as CFO from smartphone maker Xiaomi in March, will step down from his role as finance chief to focus full time on his other job as CEO of TikTok.
The Beijing-headquartered firm has also created six business units to focus on different areas from gaming to enterprise software.
When Zhang announced his plans to step down as CEO in May, he said in a note to employees that he believed someone else can “better drive progress through areas like improved daily management.”
“The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager,” he said at that time.
ByteDance was caught in the geopolitical crosshairs last year after the administration of President Donald Trump dubbed the company a national security threat and tried to force it to sell its U.S. operations. That did not happen in the end.
ByteDance’s reorganization comes after a number of reshuffles at Chinese companies in which founders have stepped back from their day-to-day duties.
Last week, Su Hua, the co-founder of TikTok rival Kuaishou stepped down as CEO but stayed on as chairman. And in September, Richard Liu, the founder of e-commerce giant JD.com, stepped back from day-to-day operations to focus on the company’s long-term strategy.
TikTok Is Expanding Into Job Recruitment
TikTok — a social media platform best known for its sober, academic exploration of the heady subject matter frequently tackled by its user base — is currently rolling out plans to establish itself as a presence in the job recruitment space.
Surely Gen Z will use this as a moment to conduct itself with decorum and maturity, and not as an opportunity to troll Fortune 500 companies.
According to a new site sponsoring the endeavor, known as TikTok Resumes, the app now allows users in the U.S. to apply for entry, associate and senior level positions by tagging videos their videos using the hashtag #TikTokResumes. The initiative is part of a pilot program that currently has about three dozen companies participating, including Target and Chipotle, as well as select media companies, including Meredith Corporation, ATTN and PopSugar.
While the pilot initiative’s intentions seem honorable enough — the company wants to help “support our community members who are looking for job opportunities” by “encouraging our users to turn their traditional paper resume into a digital video resume or elevator pitch,” per its website — the (temporary) foray into job recruitment seems to have enough awkward speed bumps embedded in it to at least give some prospective candidates pause.
On the TikTok Resumes website, for example, the platform specifies that, yes, video resumes will need to be public in order for participating companies to view them — adding a complicated and potentially embarrassing wrinkle for anyone who is either looking for work without the knowledge of their current employer or simply not a total exhibitionist.
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TikTok also notes that the hiring system is not uniform among the participating companies, meaning that it will be potentially difficult for prospective hires to track where their applications are within the hiring pipeline or if their resume has even been received or viewed at all.
A spokesperson for TikTok told Engadget that the company “… believes there’s an opportunity to bring more value to people’s experience with TikTok by enhancing the utility of the platform as a channel for recruitment.” And while it’s true that many of the platform’s Gen Z user base is currently struggling with a shortage of employment opportunities — particularly given the devastating global pandemic we’re still army crawling our way out of — perhaps its considerable reach and influence would be better served boosting causes and campaigns its users care about.
Interested applicants will have until July 31st to submit their video resumes for the first round of jobs posted to the platform.
ByteDance takes on Tencent with major gaming studio acquisition
ByteDance has been boosting its gaming arm Nuverse through a hiring spree and in March acquired gaming studio Moonton.
Getty Images
GUANGZHOU, China — ByteDance has acquired major mobile gaming studio Moonton, highlighting its ambitions in the video game industry and pitting it against Chinese giant Tencent.
Known as the owner of TikTok or Douyin in China, ByteDance is looking to diversify beyond advertising and take a slice of the $86 billion mobile gaming market as well as expand its footprint internationally.
ByteDance’s gaming arm Nuverse, founded in 2019, was behind the acquisition.
“Moonton is the perfect partner to help expand our gaming strategy in international markets,” ByteDance said in a statement.
Reuters reported that the deal valued Moonton at $4 billion, citing two unnamed sources. ByteDance declined to comment on the value of the deal.
“This is a mega deal in the global gaming industry, not only within China. So the M&A craze in the gaming sector continues, and I believe ByteDance is still on the lookout for other studios,” Serkan Toto, CEO of consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.
“Be prepared for a long war between Tencent and ByteDance for acquiring game content.”
ByteDance’s international push
Tencent is a world leader in mobile gaming and behind some of the top titles. It has managed to do this over the past few years via acquisitions and taking strategic stakes in smaller companies as well as developing its own titles. This has allowed Tencent to have an extensive portfolio of games that continue to rake in money for the company.
It has also allowed Tencent to expand internationally, a feat that ByteDance is also hoping to achieve.
Moonton is famous for “Mobile Legends” a so-called multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game where teams fight each other in large virtual arenas. Popular titles in this category include Tencent’s “Honor of Kings” and “League of Legends” which was developed by Riot Games.
“Mobile Legends” is popular in southeast Asia. And ByteDance last year partnered with gaming firm Gravity to release “Ragnarok X: Next Generation” in the region.
“Bytedance is taking a global approach to its video game business from day one,” gaming analyst firm Niko Partners wrote in a note to clients.
TikTok leverage
ByteDance operates short video app Douyin in China and TikTok in international markets. Last year, ByteDance said Douyin had 600 million daily active users and that TikTok had 700 million monthly active users.
The company could use the social media platform to promote games and attract users.
“With Bytedance at the helm, the two firms (Moonton and ByteDance) could leverage TikTok / Douyin to promote Mobile Legends in markets such as China and the US where Tencent’s Honor of Kings and Riots’ League of Legends: Wild Rift are the dominant mobile MOBA titles,” Niko Partners said.
But ByteDance may not be able to rely on acquisitions alone to be successful in gaming.
“The biggest challenge for Bytedance will be to create a self-developed hit that it can operate over the long term. Hence why it is signing publishing deals to publish games based on popular IP and acquiring game development firms with a proven record of success,” Niko Partners added.
China’s Love of TikTok-Style Apps Powers $5 Billion IPO
Kuaishou Technology has its eyes on the world’s biggest initial public offering in more than a year, seeking to raise about $5 billion from a Hong Kong share sale as short-video and live-streaming apps surge in popularity in China.
Kuaishou—which competes with ByteDance Ltd., the rival Chinese company behind TikTok and its sister app Douyin—started taking investor orders Monday. With the offering, which could value it at more than $60 billion, Kuaishou is joining a string of tech companies from China that have listed in Hong Kong.
Kuaishou, which means “fast hand” in Chinese, is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. It was co-founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, software engineers who previously worked for Google China and Hewlett Packard , respectively.
Both Kuaishou and ByteDance have capitalized on growing demand from younger Chinese people to watch and record short videos on their smartphones. Its namesake short-video platform is the world’s second-largest, according to data cited in its prospectus, and there were 305 million average daily active users of its apps and mini-programs in China for the nine months as of September.
With a minimum deal size of $4.95 billion, the IPO would be the largest in the world since late 2019, when state-controlled Saudi Arabian Oil Co., commonly known as Aramco, raised $29.4 billion, Dealogic figures show.