Beijing The Chinese Internet company Bytedance, operator of the well-known short video service Tiktok, is reorganizing itself. According to a letter from company co-founder and Bytedance CEO Liang Rubo to his employees, the company is to be divided into six business areas. Several media reported unanimously about the letter that was sent to Bytedance employees on Tuesday.
“The company has experienced rapid growth in recent years, and we have always adapted the organization to business needs and continuously promoted the optimization and improvement of the organizational structure,” said Liang Rubo in the letter. As the company’s business evolves and the team grows, each business is faced with different opportunities and challenges.
Liang was recently transferred to the position of CEO at Bytedance and will not officially take over until the end of the year. Bytedance founder Zhang Yiming announced in May that he would leave his post as head of Bytedance by the end of the year.
Bytedance’s main product is Douyin, a short video app that is very popular in China. The counterpart for the market outside the People’s Republic has a very similar structure and goes under the name Tiktok. The service is the only major platform with international reach that does not have its roots in the US. Bytedance recently announced that the Tiktok app now has more than a billion monthly users.
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In the letter, Liang Rubo announced that Tiktok boss Shou Zi Chew would step down as chief financial officer (CFO) of the parent company ByteDance to focus on running Tiktok.
Trying to separate the Chinese business from the international one?
TikTok will be responsible for business with the TikTok platforms and will also support the development of expanded business areas such as overseas e-commerce, the letter said. The Chinese services Toutiao, Xigua, Sousuo and Baike, on the other hand, are to be merged with the Chinese Tiktok counterpart Douyin. This area should be responsible for the overall development of the domestic information and service business.
The other four business areas will consist of Dali Education, an education company, Lark (Feishu), provider of management services, BytePlus, which will sell cloud solutions, and Nuverse, a developer of computer games.
Observers viewed the restructuring as an attempt to separate Chinese business from international business. Bytedance got caught in the middle of the conflict between the US and China last year. The then US President Donald Trump wanted to ban the short video service Tiktok, which is particularly popular among young people. The reason he gave at the time was that the platform was a threat to American data and endangered national security. However, the ban imposed by Trump had been stopped by a court of law. Trump’s successor Joe Biden refrained from making another attempt.
Bytedance is also under pressure in its home market. Companies whose businesses are based on digital platforms have imposed significantly stricter rules on Chinese authorities and regulators in recent months.
More: Tiktok reports more than a billion users