Zhang Chao, the new head of today’s headlines, made an appearance. He was the head of Tomato Novel before.

Bytedance is sending more outstanding talents to overseas business.

Text丨Gao Honghao Shixian

Edit丨Song Wei

“LatePost” exclusively learned that Chen Xi (Kevin), the person in charge of Toutiao, will be transferred to TikTok e-commerce as the head of product and data science, and he will report to Kang Zeyu, the head of TikTok e-commerce. Zhang Chao, the person in charge of Tomato Novel, will concurrently serve as the person in charge of Toutiao, overseeing the two products and reporting to Zhang Nan, CEO of Douyin Group.

Zhang Chao joined ByteDance in 2016 and has been in charge of Toutiao, Toutiao Novel Channel and Tomato Novels successively. According to QuestMobile data, as of November 2022, over 74 million users open Tomato Novels every day. The second free online reading platform is Qimao Novels under Baidu, with around 20 million daily active users.

A ByteDance source told LatePost that the Douyin Division is promoting the interconnection of its products, including Douyin, Watermelon Video, Toutiao, and Tomato Novels. It will initiate a jump prompt for Toutiao or Tomato Novels, guiding users to watch relevant derivative content on these platforms.

Interconnection requires each application to have a deeper connection at the data and product levels. Tomato Novels and Toutiao are both text-based products, so it will be more efficient for one person to coordinate and manage them.

Zhang Chao has been deeply involved in the construction of two products, Toutiao and Tomato Novels. Since 2019, it took him less than three years to bring the free novel product Tomato Novel to the top of the industry, so he is considered the most suitable candidate. A person familiar with Zhang Chao said that his decision-making is decisive, “generally, decisions can be made on the spot at the meeting.”

Chen Xi, who left Toutiao, joined ByteDance at the end of 2020 and was initially the person in charge of Douyin Volcano. At the beginning of 2021, he succeeded Zhu Wenjia as the president of Toutiao. Before joining Byte, he served as the executive president of the online car-hailing company in Didi, and he was one of the fastest promoted and most outstanding young managers in Didi.

Affected by the rise of short video platforms and industry regulation, when Chen Xi took over Toutiao, the growth potential of this product was already very limited. According to Jiguang data, the number of daily active users of Toutiao has hovered around 100 million for more than two years.

He devoted some time to innovative projects, including the Wukong browser, and the reading product that is considered to be a high-end version of Toutiao-Knowledge Zone. However, the latter announced the suspension of operations and services in December this year, and it has been online for less than eight months.

Compared with Toutiao, TikTok e-commerce is a business with more room for imagination. “LatePost” once reported that TikTok e-commerce is accelerating its entry into new markets. In November of this year, TikTok e-commerce has entered the United States, and plans to enter Brazil, Ireland, Spain and other markets in 2023. According to internal planning, TikTok e-commerce will achieve the goal of 3 trillion yuan in GMV (goods turnover) within five years.

TikTok e-commerce has encountered many challenges overseas, including cross-cultural conflicts and labor-capital conflicts, and how to replicate the business model applicable in China to the world. Chen Xi, who has both product and management capabilities, is exactly the talent this fledgling business urgently needs.

Before Chen Xi, Kang Zeyu, head of TikTok e-commerce, and Zhou Sheng, head of TikTok commercial products, had put down their domestic business before. According to “LatePost”, Han Shangyou, who became the head of Douyin in December, was also nominated by byte executives to be the head of one of TikTok’s businesses.

A ByteDance employee told LatePost that the company strongly encourages employees to take the initiative to apply for multinational offices, and also encourages them to exchange and learn with colleagues from all over the world as much as possible. This is considered to be one of the ways ByteDance solves cross-cultural management.

Bytedance is making greater efforts to promote the growth of overseas businesses such as TikTok, and outstanding talents are also flowing with the tide, from domestic to overseas.

Byte plans to fully integrate Douyin, Toutiao, Watermelon Video and Tomato Novels

In May of this year, Zhang Nan, CEO of Douyin Group, proposed in an internal meeting that in the future, multiple products under Douyin BU will be “multi-terminal and multi-device interconnection”. It is understood that multi-terminals include different terminals such as mobile phones, PCs, Pads, and car-mounted devices; ), novels (Tomato novels).

A Douyin person said that Zhang Chao was appointed to be in charge of Tomato Novels and Toutiao at the same time, precisely for the purpose of better synergy between these two products. At present, Zhi Ying, the person in charge of Xigua Video, is also the person in charge of the operation of Douyin.

Under this strategy, the data and user portraits between the platforms will be further connected, which will help the platform better understand the user’s preferences for content consumption in the process of using different products, including likes, favorites, What content is rated and blocked, and what is the dwell time of each content.

Platforms can also take advantage of scale to help different products continue to grow. A typical example is that when a user sees an interesting TV series clip on Douyin, if he is willing to watch the next episode, the platform will recommend him to download or jump to the mid-length video product Watermelon Video, and continue to follow the series.

During the World Cup, when a user saw a commemorative video of Portuguese star Ronaldo playing football on Douyin or Toutiao, a recommendation of related books would appear on the app interface, and the user would be prompted to download Tomato Novel and read “Cristiano Ronaldo” for free.

Douyin calls this kind of content that can guide users to jump to other apps and make extended consumption “anchor points”. The more anchors, users can experience different content forms to the greatest extent.

More and more business talents are going overseas

Many Bytedance executives are currently stationed in Singapore for a long time, including founder Zhang Yiming, global CEO Liang Rubo, and TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi. ByteDance CFO has high standards and works in Hong Kong and Singapore.

A ByteDance source said that Zhang Yiming still devotes energy to many businesses, and pays special attention to TikTok and TikTok e-commerce. He participates in the strategy formulation of these businesses and occasionally attends their bimonthly meetings. One of the important tasks of Hua Wei, head of Byte Human Resources, is to support the progress of TikTok-related organizational construction, including following up the recruitment of key positions in the US and European markets.

Starting in 2021, many business leaders will also shift their focus overseas. Kang Zeyu, who created Douyin e-commerce, is currently mainly responsible for the construction of TikTok e-commerce, and Wei Wenwen was handed over to take charge of Douyin e-commerce; before that, Zhu Wenjia, the former head of Toutiao, had been transferred to be the head of TikTok products.

“LatePost” learned that Han Shangyou, who became the head of Douyin in December, was previously nominated by byte executives to be the head of one of TikTok’s businesses. Zhang Nan, CEO of Douyin Group, also began to ask and follow up some of TikTok’s business progress this year, such as the live broadcast business.

It is also understood that Ole Oberann (Ole Oberman), the former head of TikTok’s music business, has resigned in the second half of this year, and his successor is Cao Frame, the head of Resso. Resso is a music streaming product launched overseas by ByteDance.

TikTok has both greater imagination and pressure. In addition to revenue and growth pressures, the political crisis hanging over TikTok also continues to ferment. On December 27, the Committee on Foreign Investmen in the United States (CFIUS) again proposed in a recent discussion that ByteDance should sell its US business. CFIUS is an interdepartmental government committee. Many US government officials involved in it believe that only by separating TikTok from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, can the problem of data security be completely resolved.

TikTok needs to become strong as soon as possible to ensure its healthy survival if its future is passively cut from its parent company, China-based ByteDance. TikTok’s current growth rate is still lower than expected. It needs a group of domestic business leaders with mature product and management experience more than in the past. With their help, it is a race against time.