Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1357
“LatePost” exclusively learned that Zhu Shiyu, the head of Douyin’s operation office, will be transferred to be in charge of Douyin’s life service business, and his direct reporting object will be changed from Douyin CEO Zhang Nan to Douyin Vice President Han Shangyou. Han Shangyou is also a core executive of Douyin, responsible for Douyin’s live broadcast, open platform and other businesses.
Some Douyin employees said they were surprised by the personnel change. The operation office is a middle-office department of ByteDance, responsible for the strategic planning, user research and data analysis of Douyin BU and the byte commercialization department. Zhu Shiyu’s experience in handling helped him take over a business involving multi-department collaboration such as Douyin Life Service.
The Douyin BU strategic team and the commercialization department strategic team led by Zhu Shiyu have also changed. Some strategic teams may be dismantled into various business lines, and only a small number of strategic personnel will be retained in the operation office. The adjustment is still in progress, and the final plan has not yet been determined, but the adjustment will affect nearly 100 employees.
Strategic teams play an important role in most Internet companies. Alibaba and Meituan both have large-scale strategy and business analysis teams. During the peak period, the team size of Douyin’s operating office also reached more than 700 people, which is close to the size of the business analysis team of Meituan.
Meituan’s business is complex and the cost of trial and error is high. For example, its food delivery business needs to conduct sufficient research by its business and sub-teams, and make different strategies for different cities to cope with competition; while products such as Douyin have a relatively simple business model and can quickly trial and error , the difficulty and cost of adjusting the business direction are relatively small, so in the eyes of the business side of Byte, the importance of strategy is relatively less dominant.
Entering 2022, Byte’s various businesses have entered a mature stage one after another, with fewer business actions; it is more difficult to approve new projects, and there are fewer things that can be done strategically. As a result, the number of Douyin handling teams will drop to around 400 in early 2022. “It is mainly to encourage job transfer, but no large-scale layoffs.” A byte person said.
ByteDance, which has been established for more than ten years, once promoted the rapid development of its business through large-scale manpower expansion and talent redundancy under the creed of “developing miracles”. This large strategic team is the product of this background. But now, this company with more than 100,000 employees worldwide has entered a mature stage, and how to keep the organization flexible and avoid the organization from becoming bloated has become its new proposition.
The merger and dismantling of Douyin’s strategic team
Similar to most Internet companies, Byte’s strategic teams have long been in the business line, including Douyin, Feishu, Chaoxi Guangnian, and Volcano Engine, all of which report to their respective business leaders. At the beginning of its establishment, the operation office was mainly to serve the commercialization department of Byte, to set goals for the commercialization of Byte, and to do business analysis work such as business dismantling.
In mid-2021, Douyin BU’s strategic team and commercialization strategy team will be brought together into Zhu Shiyu’s hands and assigned to the operating office. Zhu Shiyu’s direct superior also changed from Zhang Lidong, the current chairman of Douyin Group, to Zhang Nan, the head of Douyin BU and the current CEO of Douyin Group.
This is the first time that Byte has unified the strategic teams of the two departments. This merger has a special background: Douyin, which has 700 million daily active users, has not only become the largest short video platform in the country, but also the platform with the highest advertising revenue in the country. Balancing commercialization and user experience is the key to its current situation. one of the most important tasks.
A person close to the operating office recalled that Douyin’s business strategy used to only look at the scale of users, product functions, etc. After adjustment, they needed to pay attention to whether product changes had an impact on commercialized revenue; commercialization strategies no longer only focused on how to improve Revenue growth also requires attention to the impact of commercialization on users and ecological health.
In this new change this year, the strategic team of Douyin BU and the commercialization department may be split again. A ByteDance person commented that after a year of practice, this organizational form has completed its historical mission – the Douyin team has a clear understanding of how to balance commercialization and user experience. .
In addition, the Douyin product itself has become more complex than in the past, covering offline business sectors such as e-commerce and life services. After all, the strategic team cannot be too far away from the business line, and needs to be closely related to the No. 1 position and team of each business line. closer communication.
After Zhu Shiyu leaves the operating office, his team will turn to Huang Jian to report. Huang Jian previously worked in the ByteDance War Investment Department.
Byte Talent vs Byte Speed
Zhu Shiyu has been engaged in strategic analysis for a long time. Before joining ByteDance in March 2017, he served as the strategic director of Baidu and Sina successively. His colleagues commented on his “rationality and focus on essence”.
The appointment of Zhu Shiyu reflects the consistent employment style of Byte – using smart people, not experienced people.
Douyin has set a long-term goal for life services in the first half of this year—a not easy goal. “LatePost” learned that Douyin Life Service plans to complete a transaction volume of over 250 billion yuan in 2024. This figure is close to the total transaction volume of Meituan’s in-store, hotel and travel business in 2021 according to market estimates. In 2022, Douyin life service is expected to achieve GMV of 50 billion yuan.
Douyin’s life service initially relied on the “low price” strategy on the supply side to rapidly increase, but the cost is also obvious: when the profit margins on the merchant side are greatly compressed, their willingness to operate in Douyin for a long time will decrease, and the following is , the budget space for merchants to spend money on advertising on Douyin has also become smaller.
Douyin is also aware that the above strategy is not sustainable. Therefore, starting from the second half of this year, they have actively removed some unqualified third-party service providers, and at the same time have established direct sales teams in many cities to guide merchants and service providers from “competing prices”. to “Spelt out the content”. A Douyin life service person said that after a period of guidance, the proportion of merchants’ group meals on Douyin that is less than 50% off has decreased. “Of course, Douyin’s explicit requirement that the adjusted price still has a clear advantage over Meituan.”
They are still learning from Dianping and building a rating system for businesses.
The new person in charge is in place and the importance of the life service business to Douyin has risen in sync. As a Douyin with more than 700 million daily active users, they have a clearer goal, that is, to remove a single entertainment label and become a universal portal for users’ daily life, so that people’s entertainment, shopping, eating, socializing and other behaviors can be which is completed.
Chen Jing also contributed to this article.
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