How a product that has entered a stable period can break through the bottleneck.
Wen 丨 Shi Xian
Editor 丨Gao Honghao
Douyin has been online for less than 6 years, and more than 600 million people open it every day, consuming nearly two hours on it. This phenomenon-level product since WeChat has created a growth miracle at the end of the mobile Internet, defined new ways of content production, dissemination and consumption, and also brought ByteDance's methodology to the extreme. Without TikTok, there would be no ByteDance today.
Today's Douyin is not just a product, but one of ByteDance's largest business units (BU), which includes Douyin, Watermelon Video, Today's Headlines, Tomato Novel and other products, as well as a number of middle office businesses.
Douyin and its business unit contribute nearly 70% of the company's revenue, while the remaining five BUOs (Vigorous Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Asahi Lightyear, and TikTok) are far from contributing enough revenue; recent new businesses with bright byte performance have also grown from Douyin, such as e-commerce and local life.
This product was born under the organizational model of "big middle office, small front desk" of ByteDance, relying on the power of the system to run out. But when it grew large enough and the business became complex, the past growth model failed to a certain extent: Douyin encountered a bottleneck, and its daily active users stayed at about 600 million for more than a year; today's headlines, watermelon video and other products have also grown weakly; strong regulatory measures such as algorithm recommendation governance and privacy protection are still affecting the revenue of the business.
For the first time, "LatePost" focuses on a product and its business unit, trying to present the multi-faceted aspects of this national product in a three-dimensional way, who manages Douyin, how it operates; how the talent training system is formed; how the organizational structure is designed, and how it has been adjusted to meet the challenges today.
The number one is Zhang Nan
ByteDance's leadership principle emphasizes: there must be no sense of territory, there must be a sense of position. One example is that inside byte, TikTok is not considered to have been created by someone, but by the system.
But today, when the business growth rate of the entire Douyin BU declines, the consensus of most Byte people is that the only person who can lead the team to break through this bottleneck is Zhang Nan.
Zhang Nan is the only woman among the executives reported by ByteDance to CEO Liang Rubo, and is also the person who manages the most business besides Liang Rubo. She is responsible for douyin, today's headlines, watermelon videos, tomato novels and other products, and also manages a number of medium-sized and taiwanese businesses.
Among the many science student executives, she is a little different: she has an art background and likes to visit art exhibitions. However, its management style is highly consistent with ByteDance as a whole: the style is sharp, not only the strategy is set in general directions, but also the product details are deeply concerned. Her usual question phrase is —"So?" Zhang Nan also often asks internally, what should we do if douyin does not work one day?
In 2013, after zhang nan's photo sharing and exchange community map bar was acquired by ByteDance, she then joined the company and was responsible for the product connotation paragraph; in 2016, Zhang Nan led the team of douyin, and spent two years to surpass the largest short video product on the market at that time; in March 2019, Zhang Nan gradually faded out of douyin and became the head of the interactive entertainment business department, during which she put more energy into organizational management and led interactive entertainment to establish a number of middle stations including live broadcast, market, and video In October 2019, Douyin and Kuaishou entered the battle, and Zhang Nan returned to the front line to lead Douyin to complete the sinking market penetration.
Zhang Nan was promoted to CEO of Beijing ByteDance in 2020. At that time, ByteDance's two major content product departments, the interactive entertainment division and the general information platform (the department where today's headlines are located), reported to Zhang Nan at the same time. At the end of 2021, the two product divisions officially merged to form Douyin BU, which was managed by Zhang Nan.
According to incomplete statistics, nine business leaders in Douyin BU reported directly to Zhang Nan. In addition, there are two business leaders other than Douyin BU who report to Zhang Nan on the dotted line, namely Zhou Sheng, the head of commercial products (the solid line reports to Zhang Lidong), and Wei Wenwen, the head of the Chinese region of Douyin e-commerce (the real line reports to Kang Zeyu, and Kang reports to Zhang Lidong).
"LatePost" exclusively learned that Zhi Ying, head of douyin operations, will take over watermelon video from April this year. Ren Lifeng, the current head of Watermelon Video, may transfer to the Pico business, reporting to Pico founder Zhou Hongwei (internally known as "Henry"). Pico is a virtual reality (VR) manufacturer acquired by ByteDance in 2021 and is currently under the technical leader Yang Zhenyuan.
At a Douyin planning meeting in early 2021, Zhang Nan asked, "How is douyin's fashion vertical compared to Xiaohongshu?" The background at that time was that the number of daily active users of Xiaohongshu, which located the trend community, grew from more than 20 million to about 40 million in just one year.
"Better than little red book." The on-site personnel used core data such as the number of creator contributions and the user consumption time of Douyin as proof. Zhang Nan asked rhetorically, "We are doing better, so why does the DAU of The Little Red Book still rise so fiercely?" ”
After the meeting, the Douyin team immediately launched various studies on the Little Red Book. In mid-2021, Douyin set up an "L" task force, and most employees believe that this is to benchmark with Xiaohongshu. It is understood that the project team has about 20-30 employees on a fixed basis. The person in charge was first held by Zhang Nan, and then it was transferred to Zhi Ying, the head of the operation of Douyin.
A ByteDance person said that Zhang Nan was meticulous enough to know what rules a frequently updated product updated and paid attention to the specific details of the event. For example, he said that during the epidemic, Douyin launched a new content rule: it cannot recommend expired videos related to the epidemic. Once she swipes a video that doesn't comply with the new rules, it's fed back directly into the work group.
Zhang Nan not only cares about the details of product operation, but also cares about the details of operation. For example, when allocating a budget, she asks for a clear demonstration of where the money is spent, what effect it can have, and what the ROI (input-output ratio) is. "Measuring the R (revenue) of roi doesn't necessarily need to be how much money the company makes, it can also be how much less money it makes to competitors." said the above-mentioned person.
Zhang Nan works to the extreme, and is willing to give up other things in order to achieve his goals.
At the end of 2020, Ding Zhen, a Tibetan boy in The Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province, became popular on Douyin because of a short video. However, on December 3, Ding Zhen's live debut was preemptively won by the Kuaishou team and attracted more than 3 million people to watch. Before Ding Zhen's live broadcast, Zhang Nan paid attention to the promotional poster of Kuaishou for the first time, and she directly asked the team, "Why did Kuaishou snatch away our creators?" ”
In order to quickly formulate a response strategy, Douyin sent a special team to Chengdu City, where Ding Zhen's team is located, overnight to communicate with it, in exchange for several exclusive live broadcasts of Ding Zhen on Douyin. Douyin also hopes to sign an exclusive creator agreement with Ding Zhen, but "The Ding Zhen team did not accept it." The above-mentioned person said. In desperation, the Douyin team made another fee to sign a "non-exclusive agreement" with Ding Zhen. The idea of the Douyin team is to ensure that Ding Zhen continues to send content on Douyin and avoid being exclusively bound to other platforms.
In order to cope with the challenges that Douyin is facing today, from 2021 onwards, Zhang Nan has greater autonomy: content-based products are unified in the Douyin BU she manages; the group's large middle platform has split some of its business and capabilities into Douyin BU; and a number of business leaders outside BU have reported to Zhang Nan. Since then, she has been more flexible in coordinating resources and leading the team forward.
9 business leaders
The core management team of Douyin BU is relatively stable. Most of them entered byte around 2016 and 2017, and did not have much experience and relevant professional background in large companies, but they were young and driven, no baggage, and results-oriented.
In the early days, ByteDance had many new businesses and could cultivate a number of excellent middle-level talents. As ByteDance grew larger and more mature, companies began to hire managers who were experienced and knowledgeable about the system of large companies. After 2020, ByteDance has successively introduced Chen Xi, former CEO of Didi Online Ride-hailing, and Zhou Shouzi, former xiaomi partner. This year, the total number of ByteDance exceeded 100,000 people.
Born in 1992, Zhi Ying has worked at PwC and Uber China. After joining Uber China, she began to explore the Tianjin market from 0, and spent three months to achieve the world's largest order volume in the Tianjin region. At the end of 2016, Zhiying joined ByteDance to be responsible for the volcano short video market.
"Very motivated, deeply trusted by Zhang Nan." A ByteDance person commented. ByteDance emphasizes the culture of battle merit. When a business is done well, the company will give more opportunities to the business owner, and the relationship between the new opportunity and the old business may not be large. For example, as the head of the market, Zhi Ying, she has successively taken over the business of vibrato operation, music and entertainment.
"LatePost" exclusively learned that Zhi Ying will serve as the head of watermelon video from April, and the scope of authority will be further expanded, becoming the number one person in charge of independent products, still reporting to Zhang Nan.
Han Shangyou is also the one who takes over the new business with his military achievements. Born in 1991, he graduated from Nanjing University in 2013 and worked for Xiaomi and Tencent. After joining ByteDance in 2016, he was responsible for volcano small video, live broadcast middle office and other businesses. In 2019, Douyin Live and Volcano Live merged, and Han Shangyou became the head of Live Broadcasting at ByteDance. It is understood that Han Shangyou was originally one of the strong candidates for the head of the douyin e-commerce business.
In the second half of 2021, Han Shangyou will also serve as the head of local life on Douyin. It is understood that after more than half a year of exploration, the focus of development has shifted to live broadcasting. In terms of business development (BD), the local life department will give priority to expanding national chain customers and urban chain customers, encouraging them to broadcast live on Douyin.
Seven, the product owner of Douyin, joined ByteDance in September 2020 and once assumed the role of the general manager of Douyin, reporting to her on business lines including products, operations, and community security.
However, at present, douyin's operation business line has been turned to report to Zhiying. The local living business, which was originally led by Seven, was also reported to Han Shangyou. Seven's responsibilities gradually changed from the general manager of Douyin to a simple product leader.
In September 2021, WeChat opened up users' external link access in one-on-one chat scenarios under regulatory requirements, which gave New Hope to Douyin, whose domestic growth has slowed down.
Seven led the team to do many social functions, such as chat rooms, K songs together, etc., the purpose is to hope that users can share these fun and beautiful links on WeChat to help Douyin get new users from WeChat. However, "the impact of interconnection on TikTok's user growth and activity is worse than expected." A Douyin person said that the number of short video users in the country is now relatively saturated, and it is difficult for Douyin to achieve explosive growth through WeChat.
Ren Lifeng (internally known as "Volume") is one of the founding teams of Douyin. In the organizational restructuring in March 2020, Ren was transferred to take charge of Watermelon Video.
" Very patient and willing to listen." People familiar with Ren Lifeng commented that when communicating with others, he did not easily interrupt, but waited for him to finish speaking before putting forward his opinion.
Compared with Zhang Nan (male), the former head of Watermelon Video, who likes to use data analysis to guide behavior, Ren Lifeng believes in his product judgment more. He believes that short videos are different from medium-long videos, the former using algorithms to distribute their favorite content to users, while the latter needs high-quality content.
But the reality is that the user structure of Watermelon Video is sinking, and they do not accept the so-called boutique content, which may be one of the reasons for the decline in the platform's data. "The team initially expected a decline, but now the decline is still greater than expected." A watermelon video person said. According to Aurora data, the number of daily active users of Watermelon Video has fallen from less than 50 million at its peak to about 35 million.
Chen Xi joined ByteDance at the end of 2020 and initially served as the head of the Douyin Volcano Edition. At the beginning of 2021, he succeeded Zhu Wenjia as the CEO of Today's Headlines.
Prior to joining Byte, Chen Xi worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and KKR. In 2016, Chen Xi joined Didi and successively served as the director of the strategy department, the general manager of Xiao Orange Car Service and the executive president of e-hailing. He is also one of Didi's fastest-promoted and most prominent young managers, and many Didi employees call him "K God".
As user attention continues to be occupied by emerging short video products, the growth of today's headlines is obviously weak. According to Aurora data, in January 2020, the average number of daily active users of today's headlines was 107 million; two years later, its average number of daily active users has dropped to about 0.96 billion, a decrease of 11.5%.
It is understood that after Chen Xi took over as the CEO of today's headlines, he put more time and energy into researching new projects and tried to find room for growth outside of today's headlines. Intelligent reading products - Zhiqu is a new project promoted by Chen Xi, and the content of the new product comes from today's headlines. In September 2021, Chen Xi also launched a "browser that can make money" - Wukong Browser, where users can search and watch article videos on the browser to get gold coins, which can be exchanged for cash.
Around 2016, ByteDance found a group of business leaders from Baidu, who have now become the backbone of ByteDance. For example, Yang Zhenyuan, head of the algorithm middle office, and Hong Dingkun, head of the project middle office. Zhang Chao, head of Tomato Fiction, which belongs to Douyin BU, is also one of them.
Zhang Chao chose to leave Baidu in 2016 to join ByteDance. He has successively been responsible for the headline number and the headline main novel channel. A person familiar with Zhang Chao said that his logic is clear, decisive decision-making, good at making decisions, "generally at the meeting he can make decisions on the spot." ”
In 2019, ByteDance created an independent free novel product, Tomato Novel, which was responsible for Zhang Chao. After the launch of this free reading product, it directly impacted the traditional online text payment model. Today, tomato novels have about 50 million daily lives, ranking first in online reading products.
Tomato Novels earns revenue by interstitial advertising while users read it. At the same time, there is also a certain proportion of mandatory advertising, which is more expensive. "LatePost" learned that tomato novels contribute about 5 cents of income per day to each daily active user, and the same main free-to-read seven cats novels, this income is about 4 cents.
Zhu Shiyu graduated from communication university of China with a master's degree in advertising in 2008. After graduation, he successively served as the director of strategy in Baidu Business Analysis Department and Sina Group. In March 2017, Zhu Shiyu joined ByteDance and was responsible for the commercialization strategy, reporting to Zhang Lidong, the head of commercialization.
In mid-2021, Zhu Shiyu became the head of byteDance's operation office, and he changed from reporting to Zhang Lidong to reporting to Zhang Nan, and was responsible for the strategic planning of Douyin BU, the commercialization department, and the Douyin e-commerce department. It is understood that the operation office will be adjusted again in the near future.
"Long-term vision, meticulous thinking, strong output ability" is the evaluation of many ByteDance people. Zhu Shiyu believes that small companies die on their own shortcomings, and large companies lose on their own advantages. The so-called advantage is just a relatively dynamic equilibrium game, time has changed, people have changed, everything has changed. Those strengths that are summarized can be a major obstacle to continued success in the future.
Kai Wu graduated from Tsinghua University with a master's degree in electrical engineering in 2006, and he has been responsible for searching related businesses at Microsoft, Baidu, Taobao, and Qihoo. In 2017, he joined Byte as head of search. "LatePost" learned that Wu Kai, who has worked at Byte for nearly 5 years, will have changes in his recent work.
After three years of incubation and exploration, ByteDance's search business officially began commercialization in September 2020 and launched search advertising.
Prior to this, the monetization method of Byte's content-based products Douyin and Toutiao was mainly information flow advertising - when users pull down content, information flow will display ads. However, search ads cost less to convert than algorithmic recommendations.
Similar to the reason why Zhang Nan joined ByteDance, Liu Jiabin also joined ByteDance because his company was acquired.
Liu Jiabin graduated from Xiamen University in 2009 with a bachelor's degree, worked in NetEase and Meitu, and later joined FaceU as the deputy of founder Guo Lie. In 2018, FaceU was acquired by ByteDance, and Guo Lie and Liu Jiabin entered ByteDance to be responsible for cameras and other related businesses. With the 2019 Guo Liguo study, Liu Jiabin became the person in charge of the video center.
"Clear thinking, peaceful temper", people familiar with Liu Jiabin commented. One of his great achievements at ByteDance was the creation of simple, easy-to-use video editing software. It is understood that in October 2021, the daily life of the cut screen has exceeded 20 million.
"Without clipping, the works in Douyin will be more biased towards PGC (content produced by professional institutions), and there is no such high user creation atmosphere." A ByteDance person said that on the one hand, the cut reduces the threshold for Douyin user creation, on the other hand, it also improves the overall quality of the videos created by users, making UGC (user-produced content) more unified and beautiful.
"LatePost" learned that Liu Jiabin's work will also change in the near future.
ByteDance has cultivated a group of middle-level people with good ability, but it is difficult to cultivate core executives with stronger comprehensive ability like Zhang Nan. This is largely limited by its organizational structure.
In the past, Byte had a single business and implemented an organizational structure of "large middle office + small front desk", rather than a business unit/business group (BU/BG) structure. This gives the business owner more autonomy and room for product development.
However, the disadvantage of the "big middle office + small front desk" model is that because of the existence of the middle office, these middle-level leaders only need to be responsible for a single vertical business, and do not need to think too much about how to grow and commercialize, which also leads to certain limitations in the field they are involved in and the ability to obtain.
ByteDance established 6 PUs in November 2021, trying to make each BU take on the responsibilities of research and development, products, technology, and monetization alone. Because the business is large enough, independent and complex, BU will help to cultivate a more comprehensive high-level for the company.
In recent years, in addition to Zhou Shengzi, Chen Xi and Seven, ByteDance has also introduced fewer talents. Before Xu Jie, the head of Kuaishou Game, joined Kuaishou, he was also tried to dig up by ByteDance, but "Xu Jie gave up because Byte already had a strict instruction from the game leader." A person familiar with the matter said.
In the context of fewer business innovation opportunities and the number one position in the main business, how to introduce real strongmen is the challenge of the future construction of ByteDance's talent echelon.
Flexible inverted "F" organizational system
Douyin is the most mature sample to observe byteDance's organizational design. In the past, the system on which Douyin relied for success was supported by a single product and a strong middle office system, including growth, engineering, algorithms, and commercialization.
After 6 years of development, Douyin's organizational system today is more complex and advanced than it was then. This system can be summarized as an inverted "F" type: there are 4 businesses on the vertical axis, Douyin, Today's Headlines, Watermelon Video, and Tomato Novel, and a vertical business center; at the bottom is the group's four large middle offices.
In 2019, Zhang Nan, who was then the head of the interactive entertainment business department, led the establishment of a number of small middle stations within the business department, such as live broadcasting, marketing, video, etc. "These needs of Douyin are personalized from the group level and lack of versatility, so the business department decided to do it itself." A ByteDance person said.
The inverted "F" type organization design is relatively flexible. The roles of front-end business, small middle office (service BU), and large middle office (service group) are not completely fixed, but "flow" with the development stage of the business.
Businesses and middle offices will transform into each other at different stages.
Some functions of the line of business can evolve into roles in small or even large middle offices. In September 2019, the originally independent Douyin live broadcast and volcano live broadcast businesses merged into the live broadcast middle platform, serving the mutual entertainment business department. The live broadcast small middle platform will also output the ability to the group level, such as Wang Yinglei, the head of live broadcasting in TikTok BU, who also reported to Han Shangyou, the head of live broadcasting. This is how the market middle office is established.
The middle office can also incubate the business, and the cut is the representative product. After ByteDance acquired FaceU in 2017, it began to invest heavily in camera and special effects research and development, and established an image center. In 2019, the video editing software was hatched in the image center, and users can upload material clips in the clip, and after completion, they can directly share them to Douyin, Watermelon Video, etc. It is understood that Cut Ying is currently thinking about an independent commercial model.
In June 2020, ByteDance officially released the volcano engine business, exporting the technical capabilities in the large middle office into a to B (to business, that is, enterprise-oriented business) business; after the adjustment in November 2021, the volcano engine was clearly defined as a separate BU.
With more and more content-based products and higher and higher product differentiation, small middle offices began to customize business needs.
Douyin users upload more short videos of 1-15 seconds, creators need to upload materials and clip videos faster, which requires editing tools to be fast, simple and easy to use; watermelon videos are medium-long videos, creators will shoot footage for a whole day, which requires editing tools to do a faster cloud storage and upload materials, so for watermelon video creators, the image center will do additional processing on the editing tools, such as PC-side products that are more suitable for video author editing.
In addition to the conversion between the business and the middle office, the large middle office can also be broken down into small middle offices to enter each BU.
The middle office is practical, but not advanced enough and not adaptable. As business increases, the middle office will become complex, and with the change of business stages, the efficiency of the middle office will also decrease, and it will not be able to support the business accordingly, especially if it cannot adapt to new services that require rapid response. "The byte approach is that the middle office that is not easy to abstract into the general capability is dismantled into the bubs, and the middle office that can become the general capability can be turned into the external output of the B business." A ByteDance person said.
A typical example of a large middle office tearing out a small middle office is a growth center. Growth Middle Office is one of byteDance's four big middle offices, which originally not only supported products such as Douyin and Toutiao, but also supported businesses such as vigorous education. In September 2021, Wu Xiaodan's team, which was originally responsible for the growth of Douyin Line, was split and merged into Douyin BU, becoming the new growth center of Douyin BU, and Wu reported to Zhang Nan. "The growth of the small middle office can achieve the fastest response according to the needs of the vibrato BU." said the above-mentioned person.
In January 2022, as one of byteDance's four major middle offices, the commercial middle office, its talent marketing platform Xingtu was also spun off and merged into Douyin BU, and David, the head of Xingtu products, turned to Zhi Ying, head of Douyin operations. Xingtu is a platform where talents can receive promotion tasks published by advertisers online, for creators of Douyin, Watermelon, and Today's Headlines to receive orders and monetize.
"In the future, it will continue to be demolished: the big middle platform will be demolished into the small middle platform, and the big middle platform will become thinner and thinner." said the above-mentioned person. The core direction of change is to break up the middle office and modularize it, so as to increase flexibility and improve the adaptability of small middle offices to different business types and different stages of business. Not only byte, Ali also began to emphasize the thinning of the middle office at the end of 2020 to achieve rapid response.
These adjustments may not necessarily solve the problem of slowing down the growth of products in Douyin BU, but they can make BU No. 1 have more autonomy and flexibility to quickly move forward with the business and improve collaborative efficiency; on the other hand, it also reduces the management pressure of the CEO.
New strategy: all-terminal + all-crowd
As a short video product with 600 million daily active users, Douyin should seem to have enough security.
The Douyin team has done many experiments - when the content that the tested users like to watch every day is deliberately blocked, their use time on Douyin will not be significantly reduced. For example, if users who prefer to watch film and television content can't watch such content, they will not leave, but may turn to other content such as homemade skits and food.
"No matter what kind of content category is used for testing, the positive or negative fluctuation range of the data is only a few tens of thousands." A ByteDance person said. Still, the team was full of anxiety.
"LatePost" learned that the Douyin team set a goal of reaching 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs) and about 750 million daily active users (DAU) in 2024.
"At present, the important strategy of Douyin, whose number of short video users is close to saturation, is to find the increment of the whole population and the whole terminal as much as possible, and to find the stock market that can be fought for." A ByteDance person said that perhaps all groups of people and different terminals bring very little user growth and time growth, but they can accumulate into more.
The whole population refers to the need for vibrato to strive for the growth of different groups of people in the low, medium and high lines.
In the competition for sinking users, "LatePost" has reported that from the beginning of 2021, Douyin has launched a fierce attack on the most stable position of Kuaishou: high subsidies for new and old users through the Vibrato Express Edition; the establishment of a strategy group for specific groups of people - age, to strive for groups over 45 years old; geographically, to strive for the northeast and northwest regions.
"Farmer group" is one of the main directions for Douyin to win the sinking users in the north in 2022. It is understood that Douyin has formulated a northern user growth plan for the direction of "rural, agricultural, and farmer" this year, on the one hand, to supplement the content of rural themes from the content ecology, such as the content of "catching up with the sea" and "rural life", and at the same time introducing relevant anchors; on the other hand, to further obtain users in the fifth and sixth lines and villages and towns outside the third and fourth-tier cities in the northeast and north China.
In addition to competing for sinking users, the expansion of high-line users and users who pay attention to quality of life is also in progress. "This means that it will inevitably compete with Little Red Book and Station B." A ByteDance person said. "It doesn't really matter whether they live in first- or second-tier cities or third- or fourth-tier cities, or whether they're 20 or 50." A person close to ByteDance said, "For example, they buy a kitchen knife to study the brand, which is also about the quality of life." ”
The "L" special project (Little Red Book Special Project) led by Zhi Ying has also made many attempts to this end. In terms of products, Douyin launched the graphic production function in October 2021, and launched the operation activity "Here Comes" series at the end of December last year, hoping to produce more graphic content from the supply side of ordinary users; on the creator side, the team's goal is to increase the proportion of the small red book head creators (with more than 30,000 fans) covered by Douyin from 40% to 80% within two months.
The full terminal is another important growth direction of Douyin in the future, that is, the overall growth of Douyin mobile terminal, PC terminal, iPad terminal and vehicle terminal. The growth of the multi-terminal level cannot bring about an increase in the number of users, but it can effectively increase the user duration. "Douyin users with iPad and mobile use are using it for more time than mobile-only users." A person close to ByteDance said.
In mid-June 2021, Douyin launched the PC version, which is one of the all-terminal plans. Compared with the Douyin mobile terminal, the RECOMMENDED video length of the pc version of the homepage is more than 1 minute, and there are multiple vertical content sections in the left sidebar. "LatePost" learned that the current daily active life of the Douyin PC version is about 1 million, and it will not consider commercialization in 2022. "The PC version not only helps to increase the duration, but also helps to expand the search scene." An analyst who has long followed ByteDance said.
In addition to finding new increments, the slowing growth of Douyin began to enter a more refined self-adjustment.
"LatePost" learned that in September 2021, the douyin operation began to adjust its structure, and some employees transferred or left their jobs. Li Tian, the head of operations of Douyin, transferred to Douyin e-commerce in early 2021.
In the early stage of the development of Douyin, the market and operation need to pull the heads and middle waist creators of various industries to submit articles, and constantly provide diversified content supply. Today, Douyin, which has 600 million users, has enough content and high enough brand, and creators will take the initiative to come.
Subsidies for creators are more refined. Zhang Yiming once likened subsidies to creators to watering crops in internal meetings. He demanded "no flood irrigation, but drip irrigation": there is a kind of agricultural drip irrigation that is widely used in countries such as Israel, and there are small pipes next to each crop, and the pipe has precise small gaps to ensure that this water only flows to the crops and not to weeds.
"Next, what Douyin wants to solve is to allow the vast majority of creators to enter the market economy, and the creators themselves make enough money, then this ecology does not need the intervention of operation at all, and can achieve self-circulation." An Internet analyst commented.