ByteDance CEO's New Broom Sweeps Businesses: Merging Douyin, News and Search Services

BEIJING, November 2 (TMTPOST)— The new CEO of TikTok’s parent is launching his first major overhaul in businesses. ByteDance decided to divide businesses into six units, one of which consists of TikTok’s Chinese sister Douyin, Toutiao, the most popular news app in China, Xigua, a video-streaming app, the online encyclopedia arm Baike, the search engine Search and vertical service businesses in domestic market, according to an internal memo released by the CEO Liang Rubin on Tuesday.

Source: Visual China

In the reorganization, TikTok remained a key business as there was a standalone unit that takes charge of operations of the platform and also supports development of relevant expansions such as overseas e-commerce. Moreover, Shou Zi Chew, the former senior vice president of Xiaomi who joined ByteDance as CFO in March that provoked speculation of the company’s approaching listing, was stepping down to stay focused on management of TikTok, where he took on the role of CEO in early May.

The other four units include:

• Education, merging Dali, the education tech brand launched in October, 2020, and vocational education businesses to establish a service system of lifelong education;
• Feishu, combining the existing cloud document app of the same name with EE and EA so as to consolidate all the collaborative features including calendar, online documentation, instant messaging, audio and video conferencing;
• Huoshan, dedicated for creating an enterprise cloud platform for technology services to share experiences, technical tools and capabilities built up during ByteDance’s evolvement with other companies and help them record sustained growth in digital transformation;
• Zhaoxi Guangnian, the gaming unit engaged in R&D and publication of video games to offer super games and exciting experiences and build the player community.

Liang said the head of each new unit reports to him, so does the Financial Department, and all the above-mentioned reorganization would be completed step by step. “We are facing one challenge after another but the way ahead has great scenery, so I’m looking forward to working with you all to keep the ‘Inspire Creativity & Enrich Life’ efforts for our users as well as ourselves,” Liang concluded in the memo.

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