TikTok Insider: Zhang Yiming's Journey of the Great Waves

Reporter | Contributing Author Zhang Jun

Edit | Gao Yulei

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This article was first published in Interface News

Just before the political storm of being forced to sell his business in the United States was approaching, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming bought a painting about "waves".

It's early 2020 and he's living in the United States. The sudden political vortex put him in a high-loaded and sedentary state, triggering the old disease of the lower back. His body endured pain.

In the eyes of many people, this is a Chinese entrepreneur who lacks artistic cells and has a strong sense of pragmatism. It's a bit surprising that he buys art. People who know him well say the painting stemmed from his love affair with California.

In the past six years, ByteDance has gone through an international journey full of chaos and bumps. Today, TikTok's global monthly peak monthly active has exceeded 1.2 billion, and daily active has caught up with the pace of Douyin in China, which ranks more than 600 million. This means that every day, more than 1 billion people on the planet open this entertainment short video app from China through their mobile phones.

The rise of Douyin and TikTok has doubled byte valuations by nearly 36 times; more importantly, Chinese content platforms have penetrated deep into the Western hinterland for the first time and set a new model for Chinese companies to do business globally.

The painting with the theme of "waves" not only reflects Zhang Yiming's ambition to go to sea, but also is a true portrayal of the countercurrent of globalization that he has to face.

01 Zhang Yiming's pure personality

Zhang Yiming's leading voyage to the world is the AVIC Low Building located at No. 48 Zhichun Road, Haidian, Beijing. At the beginning of 2016, employees moved with the top management to this stocky, two-storey square, off-white building. It was originally home to the Aviation Museum, where helicopters can take off and land on rooftops.

Zhang Yiming, who has always been humble, sent an internal letter to remind all employees to pay attention: "We are a rare company in the imperial center of Zhichun Road. ”

At that time, Zhang Yiming was keen to manage administrative affairs, and was particularly satisfied with this low building with a height of 14 meters and a sense of space in the interior. The founder has a lot of experience with the workplace: "Many companies move to good headquarters and then they languish. He cites SUN, Yahoo, and Evernote as examples of how the environment changes mindset, and the luxurious and comfortable headquarters not only stifles innovation, but also breeds comparisons — for example, some company executives have to have independent elevators." Very cheesy. He wrote.

Just moved in, the whole company only Zhang Yiming owns an office, located on the top floor 2 floors directly east. Employees often saw him entering and leaving the elevator room, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, walking with his head bowed and brushing his mobile phone. When it's time for dinner, he will take the public elevator to the canteen on the minus 1 floor, endure hunger, and wait in line with the staff for delicious meals.

On the northwest and south sides of the 2nd floor near the center, Chen Lin and Zhang Nan sat respectively, and the two played the CEO's "left arm and right arm". At this time, the byte business is simple, with only two product lines - one is Chen Lin's responsible for today's headlines; the other is Zhang Nan's responsible for mutual entertainment, in which the connotation of the paragraph, volcano small video is in the incubation stage, and douyin has not yet been born.

Sitting on the first floor is Zhang Lidong. He was the second person to receive office privileges, although small in size, converted from a storage room. Employees call Mr. Zhang the "second boss," and his job is to earn money and build a solid monetary pillar for the company.

In 2016, in the eyes of many people, this company called "today's headlines" is just an information platform that relies on low-quality content, crawls third-party information, and algorithms to feed. To make matters worse, news clients are already the Red Sea within a Red Sea.

Zhang Yiming, a software engineer background, is less than 1 meter 7 tall, has small eyes, wears glasses, and smiles and squints; it is a bit of a joke when talking. Many people regard him as the spokesperson for data-oriented, machine rationality. This statement embodies the pure line of techno-ism, but ignores his side of doing things. He has a gentle personality and seems to be a sincere, simple, harmless person. But he has a high emotional intelligence embodied in a pure personality. People familiar with him told me that Zhang Yiming is good at understanding human nature, and can quickly transmit kindness and make the other party aware. "People who have come into contact with him often think that this young man is good and are willing to help him."

Earlier in 2014, today's headlines faced a public relations crisis. Zhang Yiming came to the door to communicate with the media. A person close to the storm recalled to me that a well-respected veteran media person was angry when he saw the controversial tech rookie, but in the second half of the conversation, the plot took an incredible turn - the other party began to take his position and consider for him.

On the other hand, Zhang Yiming is not emotional, extremely precise to people and things, and his eyes cannot tolerate gray and sand grains. This made him exude a kind of fierceness. In the early days, he sent the person who took the company code to jail.

02 Dark Line

For the founder, whose personality is pure, the global social overlord Facebook is an idol, an enemy, and an object of imitation. On their later voyages to sea, Facebook's back was always with them.

Zhang Yiming once ordered employees to explore social products, one of which was called "Fly chat". One product manager told me that Zhang Yiming often said at fei chat business meetings, such as: "We can do Facebook." "Or let's make a Facebook." "Why don't we learn Facebook?" The product manager recalled, "The most I've heard him talk about is Facebook. "To be sure, Yiming likes and even envies Facebook."

Just when the domestic foundation was not yet firm, Zhang Yiming had already set his sights on overseas. In fact, the rising TikTok a few years later is just a bright line of byte internationalization, and the dark line laid the clue as early as 2015-2016. They incubated the overseas version of today's headlines, News Master, renamed Top Buzz for a while, and then launched the overseas version of Buzz Video.

The idea of going international can be traced back to the expectation that today's headline growth will peak. As we all know, Zhang Yiming is a person who is a person who is superstitious about data. Early members of the overseas team told me that the company estimated a set of data at that time: China's information flow market, the total size of daily active activities can reach 240 million, assuming that the winner takes all, it will divide half of the market, and the daily active upper limit is about 120 million. Zhang Yiming immediately tasted the worries behind the numbers.

Reality fulfills the above inference. Today's headlines broke out in all directions in 2016, with 30 million daily active in the middle of the year, and the Spring Festival in 2017 broke through 100 million in one fell swoop; but after a short myth, it fell into a long period of fatigue (the daily active peak rose to 120 million, and now it has slipped, about 100 million). "When there is pressure to grow, I think of opportunities in the international market, and this is one of the ways."

For overseas countries, today's headlines are the United States, Japan and Latin America. "I asked Zhang Yiming directly," said a mid-level person from the original byte, "at that time, Chinese companies were internationalizing asian and African countries, but today's headlines are the United States and Japan." Zhang Yiming said that the conditions in Asia and Africa are too poor, even if it is very large, the amount is too small, and it cannot afford to wait for the market to become larger. Although the United States and Japan are difficult, as long as they occupy a piece, the share is very large - so, to be a first world country, which market is bigger. ”

Determining "which market is bigger" is a science. Zhang Yiming does not only look at DAU (daily active), he will ask subordinates to calculate the DAU multiplied by the ARPU value (Average Revenue Per User) - the total number of daily active users, multiplied by how much money a daily active user can make, and thus derive the maximum commercial benefit that a market can squeeze.

Zhang Yiming never seems to set up a mental restraint for himself. "Yiming thinks that challenging Facebook and Google should be something that should be able to do," another overseas regional director told me, "for him, it is to stand up and then kick the giants down." Zhang Yiming will say to employees, "We want to occupy this market", "If we want to become bigger, we need to..."

Zhang Yiming once solemnly analyzed internally: "Facebook is playing from high to low, and we are playing from low to high. "Meaning, Facebook is a social product, who is the social core who affects the people around, the so-called from high to low; byte is the recommended algorithm product, the algorithm and the masses walk together, synergistic, as long as more people use the App because of the algorithm, they can hold the position, make the position bigger and stronger, and finally surround Facebook, the so-called from low to high.

At the end of this year, ByteDance formulated its 2017 strategy, and there were only two P0 (highest priority) strategies: mutual entertainment and internationalization.

In the three years that followed, people marveled at the rise of the entertainment line TikTok, but overlooked another thing - byte globalization never stopped. This allows them to grasp the second and third growth curves.

03 Failed

Every Sunday, Zhang Yiming walked out of the east office on the 2nd floor, came to the conference room, and found a good seat. In 2017, he will attend the international bi-weekly meeting on time, with a maximum of 20 participants, with only middle level and above participating. Most of the time, he touched his touch-screen Surface computer with his hand, listening to meetings and typing without speaking. A middle-level person present at the scene recalled to me that among the sparse words left by Zhang Yiming, only one sentence still haunts his mind.

Zhang Yiming said: "Running fast is the most important thing. ”

However, they soon discovered that trouble ensued.

The original head of Byte Overseas was named Zhou Jingjin, a county-level city in Zhejiang Province, and Zhang Yiming pulled him into the company very early. Chinese Internet companies believe in the concept of "new people do old business" and "old people do new business". Zhou Jingjin took the initiative to invite Miao to go out to international business.

Copyright is the first big mountain. In the United States and Japan, copyright protection is extremely strict, and they cannot rely on the old way of directly grasping at home. An industry source said that there are generally two sets of response policies in the market: for content that can identify the copyright owner at a glance (such as Disney), they use the "red flag" mechanism and honestly purchase; for those who look weak and small, they will not often file lawsuits, and then use the "safe harbor" mechanism - take the vest number forwarding, circumvent the platform responsibility. But the two types of judgments all rely on people to guess, and the unfortunate moments of guessing wrong abound, resulting in byte's early lawsuits.

Zhang Yiming realized that going to sea requires mature managers with international trading experience. In mid-2016, he recruited Liu Xinhua as the head, and Zhou Jingjin reported to him. Liu Xinhua was originally the CMO of Cheetah Mobile, and has long gained fame and wealth freedom. Zhang Yiming gave the second-generation person in charge a high degree of authority - from the first day he came, he gave the business department courtesy.

The International Business Unit was byte's first business unit (BU), abbreviated as "i18n". (The source is internationalization, i and n are the first and last characters, and 18 is the number of intermediate characters.) It enjoyed independent autonomy, which was unique in byte history and did not appear in the following years. But unexpectedly, at that time, in the company that still used the middle office as the operating mechanism, the business department became a great constraint.

After Liu Xinhua took office, he quickly promoted four things - building a structure for going to sea, setting up local operations, and downplaying copyright disputes; in addition, he led the renaming of today's headline overseas version of News Master. At this time, their survey found that the users of News products in the United States were over the age of 45. To make the product young, it is necessary to dilute the color of serious news and position light information. The American slang word Buzz, which stands for something that generates buzz on social media, can refer to information, gossip, and Top Buzz refers to the best of the buzz. After the name change, Top Buzz transitioned from PGC to UGC creator economy, and wanted to do an upgraded version of the American blogging platform Medium.

One of the product's operations executives believes that in developed countries, what ultimately puts information products in a difficult position is growth. He told me that there is a world of difference between the monetization channels for the growth of the Chinese and foreign mobile Internet - in China, the mobile phone pre-installation market is large, the exposure channels are scattered, and the overall price is fair; the overseas ecology is that the user growth and monetization monopoly is in the hands of two giants: Facebook and Google. "The project is competing with them. Users come from these two lines, and the monetization channel also comes from these two lines, and the growth model is an endless cycle. ”

He made an account for me. Toutiao in China to find mobile phone manufacturers to do pre-installation, a user to cash 3 mao / day, in 50 days of the whole life cycle can earn 15 yuan, pre-installation costs only 5 yuan, which makes them profitable. (The lifecycle refers to how many days a user gets a new phone and uninstalls an app.) Overseas numbers are much more disparate. For example, in the United States, a user costs $3, but within 30 days of the whole life cycle, it can only get nearly $1 in revenue. "If you can't make money back, the result is that you're paying taxes on it," the operator concluded, "overseas, if you want to make content or social products, the ceiling is Facebook." It's a giant jaw. ”

In 2017, due to the lack of new sexy stories, Byte spent in anxiety. In July, the Strategy Department wrote a report and submitted it to Zhang Yiming. The report shows that there is little hope for the internationalization of information products, and there is an urgent need for transformation. But Zhang Yiming could not accept to retreat--"Yiming firmly believes in a miracle." The employee of the International Business Unit said that in his heart, since this model has been verified in China, it should be able to go global. The project lasted another year.

On the other hand, Liu Xinhua believes that the trend of graphics and text has gone, and his interest has become very small, and he has shifted his energy to video. According to people close to the top level, Liu went to Japan and found that Japanese information has strong products, and the opportunity is minimal, so he gave up graphics and text, only did Buzz Video, and ushered in good growth in the early days. The little video gave him a taste of sweetness. However, the drawbacks of the independent kingdom of the division have become more and more prominent, and it is difficult to draw resources from the middle of the Taiwan. And Liu wants to make a video, which does not meet Zhang Yiming's expectations for him, and the video track is guarded by byte. Therefore, under the multiple inducements of cultural integration and product direction, Liu Zairen left after only one year and joined Kuaishou.

At the 2018 project symposium, the big names sat around a square table, with the middle floor sitting behind them. On weekdays, Zhang Lidong, who knows the source of the banknote, speaks with great weight. He was a journalist and vice president of the Beijing Times. He is more emotional than Zhang Yiming, but he judges the old spicy and decisive killing. The participant relayed to me that day, Zhang Lidong, speaking in a hoarse voice, suddenly spoke: "This project is not done, and I can't make money..."

Suddenly, the room was silent, and no one dared to speak.

"This project still has a future, and we can take another look." Zhang Yiming took over.

After Liu Xinhua left, the international business department fell to zero. The products and operations were taken over by Chen Lin and Zhao Tian, the corresponding responsible persons of the headlines at that time, and the algorithms and technologies were reported back to their respective middle offices. Later, Kang Zeyu joined Byte from Baidu and took over international products. Here he incubated the Indian social product Helo.

It wasn't until August 2018 that the company decided to cut down the internationalization of information. Top Buzz, which has an outdated product form, ended tragically under the heavy mountain of copyright and growth. Byte's first business unit is coming to an end. The only fruit it left behind, Hero, did not escape the fate of being banned by the Indian government.

In Zhang Nan's line, connotation paragraphs and volcano videos also try to go to sea. It also failed.

No one had ever seen the color of anger climb up Zhang Yiming's face, he seemed to be an emotional insulator. But the above-mentioned participants heard him say, "I don't have any angry emotions now, and my biggest negative emotion about a person is disappointment."

04 Black and white double T

Zhang Yiming, who values the return on investment (ROI) and is pragmatic, will not worry about the meaning of a name, and the data will rise well. "TikTok" originated from A/B testing and master fortune telling.

However, the reason why TikTok is called TikTok is that Zhang Yiming personally took the board.

A key person who experienced the start of TikTok told me that the team took many English names and did A/B tests, but none of them were finalized. They nearly kicked TikTok out of a multitude of cool English words. TikTok is the title of a European and American pop song released in 2009, pronounced from tick tock (tick), describing the ultimate nightclub carnival. What makes people hesitate is that although this song is on fire, it is very similar to a song of saliva, and it seems vulgar in American culture. One of its few strengths is that it pronounces well. Of course, the name selection was mixed with chance. Byte changed its strategy at the beginning of the internationalization of short videos, focusing on Japan and South Korea, in these two countries, TikTok is not only catchy, but also a little playful.

"Yiming thinks that's it." The early team thought that since there is no better one, let's use it for the time being, anyway, you can change it at any time. No one expected that this onomatopoeia without any meaning would spread so strongly—"the whole world, every language, and pronounce it the same"—and eventually spread all over the world.

For content-based applications, byte's decisive weapon is the recommended algorithm. It often finds a product shell and pours its own trained algorithms into it, supplemented by the system combat capabilities of user growth and commercialization. I explained in "Douyin Insider: The Birth of the Melting Pot of Time" that whether it is a recommendation algorithm, or user growth, commercialization, Byte used to be supported by the middle office. It can be considered that these three sets of capabilities have been verified and accumulated in today's headlines. But if it stops, the company is just another news client.

Musical.ly came too soon. It gave Byte a second product shell and massive content fuel, and after merging with byte algorithm, it exploded with tenacious vitality. However, on the eve of the successful meeting of the two companies, both were caught in a period of struggle.

Music short video product Musical.ly was born in Shanghai. The two founders are like the opposite of Zhang Yiming: sensual, fluent in English, and full of artistic atmosphere - Louis (Yang Luyu) permed small curly hair, loved cycling, and wore earrings in one ear; Zhu Jun (Alex) had long gray hair, like a Taoist. The two are like artists in the Internet industry, with sharp product insights, but lack algorithms and high-level technology research and development capabilities.

The birth story of Musical.ly is a game of mistakes. It's hard to imagine that these two "artists" worked together at eBao Software, a corporate services company that does insurance. This to-B track used to be at the bottom of the chain of sexy contempt in IT circles. Of course, standing at the starting point, they don't have a single thought of entertainment in their heads. What they are prepared to do in entrepreneurship is education.

The initiator and actual controller of the company is Yang Luyu. He believes that the short video track has an opportunity, and the way out is education. Zhu Jun went to the United States at that time and jumped to sap, a corporate service provider, to study the future of education. Once he returned to Shanghai to visit his relatives, Yang Luyu lobbied him. Not long after, Zhu Jun joined as a co-founder, and the two began to explore a video mutual teaching and mutual learning community called "Knowing". But the threshold for educational video production is too high, stumbling, financing burned half, there is no hope.

Forced by the situation, we can only transform entertainment. At this time, they have accumulated a certain understanding of community products, believing that "excellent communities are a collection of attitudes to life" and "tools for self-expression". So the two came up with a new idea to preach to young people: "Live like music." In 2012, they launched the app and took a very blunt Chinese name: "Music Land". The result was the beginning of a second failure.

At this time, the status quo of the Internet industry is that 4G has not yet been popularized. The fast hand of entrepreneurship in the same period has survived a long waiting period in China. Yang Luyu and Zhu Jun, who have international work experience, have chosen another path - they plan to try their luck in countries with strong Wi-Fi coverage. Back to that point, only the United States and South Korea have Wi-Fi in public. Finally, after two setbacks at home and two desperate feelings, they set their next stop in the United States.

The name is like Heavenly Help. A person familiar with the Musical.ly told me that they wanted to find an adverb to express their attitude towards life, and that "ly" was inspired by the initials of "Lu Yu" and wanted to express: "live music.ly" in the past. But the music domain name has been registered, and the compromise has chosen musical. More coincidentally, ".ly" is the national domain name of Libya, which happened to coincide with the Libyan war that year and was sold at a particularly cheap price.

The decadence of Yang and Zhu suddenly reversed. Launched in 2014, Musical.ly is sought after by American teenagers. In just two years, the product has achieved 20 million monthly active users and 5 million daily active users in the US market. Musical.ly is known as the "toy for white kids".

Then came new troubles. From 2016 to 2017, Musical.ly the US youth market has been fully eaten, and growth has been sideways for a whole year. There are two dilemmas: one is that the brand of Musical.ly has formed a stereotype in Europe and the United States, which is the "youth version of the App", which cannot be done by other age groups; the second is that when returning to China to push the Chinese version of Muse, the best time was missed, and the local brands Kuaishou and Douyin began to encroach on the market. What is particularly difficult is that the accumulation of Musical.ly algorithms is weak, and the combat strength of returning businessmen is not satisfactory. Under the anxiety of growth, Musical.ly came up with the idea of selling.

Bytes are not the first choice for Musical.ly sale. In the third quarter of 2016, the two founders flew to Facebook's headquarters in California to meet founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is a strong bidder, having spent $1 billion to buy Instagram, a team of 20 people. Thanks to Facebook's blessing, Instagram has grown into a giant of the image community.

Zuckerberg is interested in capturing the youth market. In his opinion, Musical.ly is the "video version of Instagram". Zuckerberg sent Instagram founder Kevin Strome to Shanghai several times to discuss the acquisition with the core team of Musical.ly. People involved in the deal told me that Strom made at least three trips to Shanghai, and in the end, Facebook orally offered a pure cash offer of $1.6 billion. However, in the later stages of the negotiations, Facebook became hesitant because it was uncertain how high the ceiling of short videos really was.

The second person to extend an olive branch is Kuaishou, the originator of Chinese short videos. Suffering from insufficient cash flow, Kuaishou gave an investment plan to express its sincerity to the greatest extent. Musical.ly retained the right to independence and became a Kuaishou subsidiary, which held more than 40% of the shares.

The last to enter the game is ByteDance. At this time, Byte is eagerly looking for short video opportunities, and has incubated volcano small videos and vibrato. Volcano reproduction fast hand, vibrato reproduction Musical.ly. The company's senior management, including Zhang Yiming, prefer volcanoes – after all, they can't resist the temptation of data – the fast hand is rising considerably, the Musical.ly response in China is flat, and the executives always wonder in their hearts whether it is difficult to land Musical.ly in China. Therefore, the vibrato of pixel-level plagiarism Musical.ly has also survived a long period of silence in the founding stage, and no one has paid attention to it internally. (For the douyin startup story, see my previous article, "The Inside Story of Douyin: The Birth of the Furnace of Time.") ）

The intriguing turning point was May 2017. Douyin has broken through 1 million per day, and has just shown signs of growth. Although Zhang Yiming did not expect at this time, this product will form a crushing trend on Kuaishou in the future. However, he still changed his cold attitude and immediately found the founding team of Musical.ly. "At that time, he said, we have lived 1 million days, and soon we will run 5 million." A core member of the Musical.ly recalled to me. Zhang Yiming hoped that the two sides would cease fire and let Musical.ly agree to sell to Byte.

At that time, the founding team of Musical.ly put forward three conditions: 1. 2. Change the name of the Musical.ly and reverse the mentality of users as a teen app; 2. Access byte algorithm; Spend at least $1 billion on marketing. Zhang Yiming agreed to it all. According to people close to the deal, Zhang Yiming's offer is lower than Facebook's, only $1 billion, but it can be acquired in the form of cash + stock. Based on the $22 billion byte valuation that year, that number has now doubled nearly 20 times (new news shows that the byte valuation is $400 billion).

Also in May, which reshaped the global short video pattern, the Douyin team could not wait to launch TikTok in South Korea and Japan. They called in some of the people who were doing video projects in Japan in the early days of the International Business Unit. At this time, byte can not talk about any influence, the sea group is to help the young people who have just given birth to calves, even "recruiting soldiers and buying horses" is a difficult task, all with a passion. The product leader of TikTok and the product head of Douyin at that time were one person: Ren Lifeng, nicknamed "Roll Volume". He reported to Zhang Nan.

They opted for a differentiated strategy — "around North America" — focusing on japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, India and Brazil. Among them, East Asia is the dominant area of TikTok. However, none of these regions are of great importance to the United States. For content products, the United States is the highland, and "those who win the United States win the world." A TikTok start-up said that whether it is the short video strategy for bytes or the globalization strategy, Musical.ly is too important and "must be bought."

In November 2017, after six months of repeated consultations, Musical.ly and TikTok combined. At this time, even people in the bureau would not have thought that this would be one of the most successful acquisitions in the history of China's Internet. The combined eruption of the two is more powerful than anyone can imagine. Compared to Baidu's $1.9 billion acquisition of 91 Assistant, this is really a very good deal for Byte.

Musical.ly and TikTok's origins have also been passed down. A TikTok insider said that the icon of the Musical.ly is white as the main color, and TikTok is a black background, so one is called "white T" and the other is called "black T". "White T" mainly attacked Europe and the United States, "Black T" mainly attacked East Asia, and later the company reported that two products intended to "cross the river and rule". Some later employees believed that this may also be Zhang Yiming's negotiation skills when he acquired - playing an emotional card, "let Musical.ly feel that you are not here to grab my turf."

But both sides' original core teams were dismissive of this humane rhetoric. TikTok's team says its focus on East Asia is purely strategic. "Yiming wouldn't do such a stupid thing." Musical.ly team said that at that time, the team had not yet integrated, and the two sides were the feeling of horse racing - the black and white forces were in confrontation.

Zhang Yiming relies on documents and meetings to drive the organization to align information. He deliberately guarded against his opponents sending spies, and internal documentation would deliberately set up secret codes to block the spread of information. The above-mentioned insider said that the code number of "white T" is 1233, and the code number of "black T" is 1180.

05 The gist of Facebook

At the top left of the low building of China Aviation, there were four dark black characters of "Today's Headlines" hanging before. In mid-2018, the company removed them and hung a brand-new blue sign similar to Facebook's , "ByteDance." This year, douyin is on fire, and the daily life breaks 200 million, surpassing Kuaishou.

The company has entered the next era, and it will be fighting for territory in the same ocean as Facebook.

Nine months after the acquisition, Byte took over a team of more than 400 people Musical.ly, and on the other hand, connected the algorithm to the Musical.ly, and restarted the growth of flat data, but not so fast.

At the same time, Zhang Yiming launched the name change plan as promised. At this time, there was an alternative plan, Musical.ly team proposed to Zhang Yiming to continue the "ly" tradition and change the name to Vedio.ly. But A/B tested down, the data is not as good as TikTok. As a result, the overseas version of Douyin was uniformly named TikTok. In August 2018, Byte announced the full integration of Musical.ly and TikTok with great fanfare.

In the decision-making chain, the name change is a major event that concentrates boldness. The huge user base has a understanding of Musical.ly, and the forced integration not only loses users in stages, but also loses a lot of cash flow to rebuild the brand, which may "lose the lady and fold the army". The original Didi international person said that Didi acquired the travel company 99 in Brazil, and for a while he was hesitant to unify the name, but for complex and multiple factors, it finally gave up. Didi's choice contrasts with the byte. In Zhang Yiming's eyes, above the global map, TikTok has been beating from beginning to end with a byte and a game of chess.

There are some detailed initiatives to integrate. "Black T" and "White T" do not have a combined package. They replaced the Musical.ly icon with TikTok, with the corner label retaining Musical.ly logo; and changed the title to: TikTok-including Musical.ly. The gear change lasted for more than half a year, and after the brand mentality was established, the "including Musical.ly" field was removed. Only later found that the overall performance of "white T" was better than that of "black T", so they replaced all applications with "white T" product packages. This also shows that the new TikTok we see today is a combination of byte algorithms and Musical.ly product packages, each taking its own strengths.

Next, a gorgeous money carnival appeared. Business wars driven by money-smashing have long been commonplace in China's tragic Internet jianghu, not to mention that the initiators are accustomed to stirring up byteDance, which is not surprising. Only this time, they will burn money and lead the war overseas. Dramatically, for a while, Facebook not only did not thwart TikTok, but also regarded the latter as its most valued customer.

After the integration, TikTok ordered to enter the frenzy of throwing money, throwing money, and frantically throwing money. Their most important delivery channel is, of course, the old enemy Facebook. "From the third and fourth quarters of 2018 to the first quarter of 2019, TikTok's promotion budget grew by more than 100% per quarter," a person close to Facebook told me, "Facebook's revenue in Greater China is about $5 billion a year, and TikTok planned to contribute about $1 billion in three years." ”

The entire industry chain has been involved in this money dance. A Chinese in charge of Sales for Facebook Asia Pacific, he benefited from TikTok, who rose to prominence as a global sales champion that year. At the end of 2018, the company issued him an excess year-end bonus, "Possibly Million Level". Colleagues in Singapore and Hong Kong are saying he stepped on. At this moment, Facebook is not vigilant.

The reason for Facebook to let its guard down was simple: TikTok retention was so poor. "Is this company stupid? The users who bought basically ran away, and the retention rate of the next day was 30%. Facebook's internal view is: I direct traffic to it, it can't retain users anyway, it doesn't pose any threat. The above-mentioned person said. At the beginning of 2019, Liu Zhen, byte's senior vice president in charge of the internationalization function department at that time, specially led the team to Facebook and signed an annual strategic cooperation agreement with its senior management in Greater China.

In fact, buying on Facebook is extremely low-cost, and buying a user in the United States at this time is exaggerated to about $10. However, ByteDance, a company that calculates accounts, has silently upgraded its strategy. People close to the byte told me that instead of figuring out how long it would take to earn back their costs, they turned to observing ARPU values. Simply put, it is how much money a daily active user can make.

This is the cunning of the business war. Byte's goals weren't designed out of thin air, they were dead set on Facebook. Byte paid a lot of money to poach a group of management from Facebook, and some of them brought out Facebook data. The numbers are granular, and some of them are not disclosed in the earnings report. For example, how much Facebook lives in each country, how much money it can make... Byte has created a beautiful table covering more than 100 countries. Subsequently, they cleverly targeted the Facebook ARPU value and pushed back how much it would cost to deliver.

To Facebook's surprise, unlike social, video content can cross borders. A short video in the United States, which can be consumed in Europe, Japan, and Latin America, is inherently extensible. Moreover, this product is too humane, and it exerts a layer of magic on it. Coupled with the confusing effect of global products, the data of each country alone is not outstanding, and byte adopts the tactic of dispersing and disintegrating, breaking one by one, and finally bringing together more than 100 countries can be a blockbuster.

One of the reasons why TikTok and Top Buzz are doomed is that the former can grow naturally. What's more, the commercial jungle has forged the enterprise quite shrewdly. They soon knew they were going to reduce their reliance on Facebook as quickly as possible.

In the first half of 2019, after completing a beautiful sneak attack, TikTok shifted its launch position to Google and Snapchat. According to byte fang, this is to prevent Facebook from "making small moves of dark frustration" - all that can be imagined is that snooping on data, secretly raising costs, and artificially creating inaccurate recommendations. On the TikTok budget leaderboard, Facebook's share slipped month by month, from 20 percent to less than 10 percent. Google, Snapchat, Apple Search Ads, Twitter, and some local apps are ahead of Facebook.

By the time Facebook wakes up, it's already the middle of 2019. TikTok has exceeded 100 million in daily activity worldwide. Facebook tried to use Lasso, a short-form video app in Mexico and the United States, to block TikTok. However, it did not take long for a black swan event that touched the nerves of the world and fell from the sky.

06 Double month up 110 million!

- "Don't be complacent", "We are pigs on the cusp"

In addition to Zhang Yiming, if you want to crown TikTok as another soul figure, employees will not hesitate to vote for Zhu Jun, the co-founder of Musical.ly. It is customary to call him by his English name, Alex.

Zhu Jun builds influence at a slow pace in bytes, and he is a rare manager who I have not heard of employees showing negative emotions. Just after the acquisition, the company has continuously adjusted Zhu Jun. He initially reported to Zhang Yiming, but on the edge of the situation, it is said that Zhang Yiming was not accustomed to his foreign company style, until he recognized his product capabilities; after a period of time, Zhu Jun reported to Zhang Nan, who was in charge of Douyin and TikTok; in June 2019, Zhu Jun briefly took over as the head of Douyin, nominally reporting to Zhang Nan, who continued to be responsible for overseas. In the above three stages, Zhang Yiming was not very satisfied with TikTok.

Until October 2019, the company was once again adjusted - Zhang Nan was in charge of the country, Zhu Jun took over the overseas in an all-round way, reporting directly to Zhang Yiming - this is a promotion of his influence. TikTok ushered in a period of rapid development.

Zhu Jun is older than most byte executives and is a post-70s. He has a polite temperament, keeps a goatee, and speaks a sign of English. A native of Anhui, he graduated from Zhejiang University and worked in the field of corporate services. He was also a man of temperament, fond of drinking and singing; he often wore a gray shawl in the office, his hair was loose, and his feet were clogs. "Like a practitioner."

Inside, there is a legend of him. "I often met him on the subway, he took the subway in Shanghai, a person who was financially free," said one operations officer, "in the company, it is rare to see someone like him with gray hair, holding the door of a female colleague in the elevator room and letting others go first." "A kind old man," said a product manager (the byte employees are mainly post-90s, making the post-70s in the company called "old people"), "Alex likes to drink, originally not so busy, he will take us out for drinks." "Alex has been in the United States for many years, and when he comes, it's a combination of East and West," said one mid-level, "bi-monthly summary, every time Alex speaks, it's a treat." English is particularly authentic and can also interpret Chinese culture into English. wow! It was really great! ”

At the time of his takeover, TikTok's Chinese and foreign employees were filled with antagonism, and Zhu Jun put forward a mission, vision and values. Employees said: "Alex constructs poetic expression. "Foreigners are particularly buy in." Alex put it this way: "TikTok is commerce, a bridge, and a window. ”

Zhu Jun's inauguration was opportune. He sat in the driver's seat, gathered the hearts and minds of the people on this global fleet, stabilized the hearts of the army, and led everyone into the night together. At the beginning of 2020, TikTok had less than 250 million daily lives. The people in the boat were now unconscious, and a huge storm was brewing in front of them.

The coronavirus was rapidly circulating – the global outbreak was over, and so was TikTok.

First, at the end of February, an overseas interview was fried in the byte high-level group. Facebook COO Shirley Sandberg said in an interview that TikTok's growth rate worried her, "the growth figures are faster than ever before." What TikTok felt was not joy, but trepidation. Zhu Jun called an emergency meeting: "Sandberg has paid attention to us. ”

Immediately after, the epidemic spread rapidly around the world, injecting TikTok with a shot of catalyst. "In March and April 2020, in a double month, TikTok rose 110 million daily lives," one TikTok person told me. (Almost the equivalent of getting the whole country of Japan to use the same app for a month.) ）

However, the rapid rise in the numbers has made the byte executives more and more worried. At noon one day, Zhu Jun pulled a group containing several key leaders in the enterprise software "Feishu" developed by Byte. People close to management told me that Zhu Jun asked in the group: "What is the risk to us by removing the Facebook SDK (login interface)?" The situation was urgent, and he ordered everyone in the group to hurry up and evaluate, and the discussion was completed at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and at the latest, he would give him feedback after work on the same day.

The top priority hanging above their heads is: Should the Facebook login interface be removed immediately? Once these interfaces are accessed, Facebook seems to have installed eyeliner on TikTok, how many users log in and how many users forward every day, and see as far as the eye can see; but if not accessed, the TikTok user experience will be harmed. These interfaces are like a milk feeder.

Sure enough, all departments assessed that there was a loss — removing the Facebook interface would result in a lack of accurate portraits when acquiring users, affecting growth and monetization efficiency. Zhu Jun asked everyone to further clarify how much the user experience is lost. The team came to a joint conclusion that it did not exceed 20%.

Zhu Jun conveyed the order: Cut it off immediately.

Eventually, it took less than a week for TikTok to unplug all of Facebook's logins. They decided to wean the pacifier.

The uneasy emotions did not dissipate. At the summary of the TikTok bimonthly meeting, Zhu Jun warned managers, "Don't be complacent" and "We are pigs on the cusp".

Just when Zhu Jun was nervously taking TikTok to climb the waves of globalization, his old partner Yang Luyu in Musical.ly ran to the Byte education line to continue his educational dream - leading the team to develop a "vigorous intelligent learning lamp". He cut off the small curly hair and kept it up.

"Is it an important node in the development of TikTok?" An employee who has worked at TikTok for nearly two years doesn't hesitate to think, "It's the pandemic." Soaring. ”

07 "No gaps, total suppression"

Zhang Yiming, who sits on the easternmost side of the top floor, also regards internationalization as the meat of his heart. At the beginning of 2020, Zhang Yiming redistributed the company's power structure - he handed over the China region, appointed Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan as the chairman and CEO of the China region, and took a big step upwards as the global CEO. The "three sheets" constitute the center of power.

At this time, Zhang Yiming's bi-monthly OKR has a line that reads "Leave no gaps". People close to power told me that it was actually a code word, the full name is: "No gaps, total suppression." These eight big words are the highest orders given to TikTok by the quiet, non-aggressive boss.

Under the eight-character policy, TikTok has two unwritten conventions: no matter which region, as long as the competitor goes, TikTok must advance to crush it; but whenever the list appears to be ahead of the competition, it must defeat the other party within a week, no matter what price. Even if "kill a thousand enemies and inflict eight hundred self-inflicted losses", as long as they are invincible, they will not hesitate to do anything.

The user growth (UG) middle office is the vanguard of the highest instructions, and the person in charge is named Zhao Qi. He is a doctor of computer science at Peking University, looks polite, wears black-rimmed glasses, and was once the co-CEO of the startup "Car Is Coming". It's a failed venture. But it's just so strange that big companies — sometimes they take a stand-alone approach to people with entrepreneurial experience, even those who have failed. Perhaps because of the tragic color of their bodies, or the courage to control the overall situation, or just the sincere words that people confide after seeing the bottom of the business valley, they always make the CEO feel pity for the disease and pity each other.

In Byte, colleagues called Zhao Qi "the person who spends the most money on the Chinese Internet." To put it simply, the UG middle office managed by Zhao Qi spends money to exchange for user growth, and the product snowballs up, and the commercial middle office managed by Zhang Lidong then makes money by peddling products. At this point, for TikTok, spending a lot of money on growth is a top priority, and commercialization is premature.

TikTok started from China, like the feet of an octopus stretching freely on the earth, and the global territory continues to expand. They divide the country into four levels of s, a, b, and c, and the strategic priority is lowered in turn.

Just like the headline initial internationalization, developed countries are the key to TikTok's attack. Cultural products, once the hub is conquered, then radiate to other regions, belong to the cultural dimensionality reduction strike. (Douyin has also implemented this idea in China, starting from first- and second-tier cities.) ）

People familiar with the matter told me that in the global budget market, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan and other developed countries have taken most of the banknotes. India invested strategically because of its large territory; Latin America and Russia had to invest because of competitors Kuaishou and Likee (under the banner of happy times), respectively, because of the "no gap" four-word policy (Russia was originally c, and later rose to b).

The potential of cultural dimensionality reduction is too great. Southeast Asia is the downstream of Chinese culture, TikTok only made a small amount of investment, it topped the Thai App Store list, and won the first place in the Vietnamese App Store and Google Play double list. "It's up in a huff." In the Middle East, TikTok only launches Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the surrounding countries also rely on natural radiation. In Iraq, as in the case of Iraq, TikTok never spent a penny. However, during the epidemic, TikTok surged to 6 million daily active, and the mobile Internet population in Iraq was about 25 million, with a daily active penetration rate of 24% and a monthly active penetration rate of 40%.

"Everybody was stunned," the employee concluded, "and the biggest difference between TikTok and Kuaishou and Likee is that it occupies the developed countries." It has a public pool, U.S. content supply globally, TikTok content supply to East Asia, Southeast Asia. It's particularly powerful. ”

In contrast, Kuaishou internationalization has taken many detours. Former Kuaishou employees said they had used the so-called "horse racing mechanism" and changed the bizarre names in various regions — Kwai, Snack Video, Zynn (closed). These small teams have sprung up like mushrooms, fighting independently. The person in charge is like a marquee, and the person in charge who has just announced his departure, Tony, is from Didi and is the fifth wave of the team.

During his term of office, Qiu tried to converge and focus as much as possible. They also pondered whether it was time to learn the TikTok unified name, but kept wandering and shelved. First, the Kuaishou capital warehouse is not as full as byte; second, the cross-regional radiation potential energy of content is not as good as TikTok. Now only in the Brazilian market, there is a lot of sound.

In order to clarify the trajectory of TikTok's rise in various countries, it is necessary to introduce a little business knowledge. Generally speaking, TikTok spans four stages, and "inflection point" is the most wonderful moment.

The first stage is brainless smashing of resources. Douyin verifies the extraordinary nature of this business story, which is nothing more than a copy in the world, the so-called "simple belief, silly persistence".

The second stage is the construction of content ecology. The operator dug up All the Influencers such as YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. If a competitor spends 10,000, TikTok spends 20,000. On both ends of the machine are the user and the content. The user growth end continues to transport users, the content side continues to send talents, the two sides produce chemical reactions, and the user experience spirals upwards.

The third stage is the milestone moment – the inflection point has arrived. Byte has an "inflection point theory" that places additional emphasis on "DAU permeability" (daily active permeability). The higher the daily active penetration, the higher the user stickiness, and the retention rate that previously plagued TikTok and caused Facebook to misjudge will naturally increase. According to experience, the penetration rate of various countries has reached 20%-30%, which can meet the inflection point.

The inflection point is a magical moment. When it comes, app popularity mainly relies on interpersonal transmission and natural growth. "Buying volume: natural quantity" transitions from buying volume to natural quantity accounting for the majority, and the number moves backwards one grid at a time. Globally, the purchase volume began to account for 70% or 80%, and now it has dropped to 20% or 30%, "forming a natural and healthy growth state.".

The fourth stage is brand building and commercialization.

S/a/b/c ratings will not remain static, and each country may be on the "elevator" at any time. The determinants are complex. It is not only related to hard indicators such as population base, per capita GDP, Internet penetration, and the market ceiling of digital marketing advertising, but also inseparable from soft factors. TikTok is a mirror of the cultures of various countries.

Indonesia originally belonged to b, and for a period of time it went straight to a, stemming from the strong expression of Southeast Asians. The TikTok release rate is as high as 10% in Indonesia, compared with less than 5% in China and only 2%-3% in Japan. "East Asians are more restrained." A person in charge of national strategy said.

South Korea began to belong to a, but due to the lack of daily growth, it fell to c, and for a period of time it was raised to b. Some employees have judged that it may be related to the fact that "Koreans are more exclusive". "You see 85% of South Korea's market share is Samsung and LG, no Chinese, no Apple." Another factor is that "there are too many entertainment options in South Korea".

In this way, TikTok used rapid speed and deep funds to hammer out a moat. People close to the strategy told me that in the three years from 2018 to 2020, TikTok had a lot of cash in it, mainly in four directions: about $5 billion for marketing growth brands, about $2 billion on content construction subsidies, about $1.5 billion to $2 billion for server broadband, and finally on personnel costs. It is estimated that $10 billion has been invested. (That's the size of the funding at the valuation of 10 unicorn companies.) ）

The above people believe that any platform that wants to do a resistance product, the user migration cost is at least multiplied by 2 or 3, that is, 20 to 30 billion US dollars. No matter which crocodile it was, it was a huge amount of money, enough to make him frown and hesitate for a while.

Zhang Yiming is bold and bold in throwing money, and he also relies on Zhang Lidong sitting downstairs when he is in the low building of China Aviation. Zhang Lidong is the company's "banknote manufacturing machine" and "god of wealth", enriching the company's money bag by monetizing from today's headlines and vibrato.

08 Political Adventures

However, the joy of the spurt of growth was immediately drowned in a political storm.

Back in 2016, the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It was interpreted as the most stringent bill in history, with staggering maximum fines – 4% or 20 million euros of the world's annual turnover. At the beginning of the GDPR, authorities targeted Facebook, which received a fine of 10 million euros in 2018. The adoption and implementation of the GDPR has triggered the attention of countries to personal privacy, and the global data network has begun to move from common to fragmented under increasing supervision.

As Western economic growth declines and populism rises, local protectionism becomes prevalent. TikTok also took the first shot at political censorship.

At the end of 2019, then-US President Trump launched a challenge on the grounds that the byte acquisition Musical.ly had not been reported to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. In response, Zhang Yiming stayed in the United States for several months.

In fact, Zhang Yiming recognized the situation clearly in advance. That was before the political storm knocked on the door. In order to prevent data hazards, TikTok's overseas "localization" began in an orderly manner. A TikTok source told me that in early 2019, Byte began to assess the risk of isolation internally and make a plan; from the third quarter, "localization" was officially launched. The movement is by no means as simple as a light technology switchover, from auditing, operations, servers, to technical product personnel, the huge and complex process lasted more than a year.

In the face of quiet migration, the work of the parties has suffered a heavy blow. The first wave was the auditors. Former Byte employees said that at this time, more than 300 people's review team was dismissed. Most of these employees are bilingual workers who specialize in small languages, and although they are allowed to transfer jobs, they are limited by the restrictions of work types and have little chance of winning.

In the first quarter of 2020, as the haze of the epidemic spread around the world, TikTok launched a second wave of relocation for operations personnel. Their job is to find people and control the style of content. Overnight, power in many regions was transferred from China to overseas, such as the near dissolution of the European operations team, or the transfer of jobs, or the departure of the staff. Only regions that do not involve geopolitical risks, such as Southeast Asia, can operate domestically.

Among those who left, there were many meritorious people. Two Musical.ly members merged into TikTok to oversee western and central European operations. TikTok's European general manager is named Rich Waterworth. He ordered the two of them to quickly hand over the work to the European team within a week. "The two girls are particularly aggrieved, we have worked hard here for three or four years, you let me hand over in a week, the team has to cut the past." 」 One person who had been in contact with them said that the two later changed jobs, one doing games and the other doing public welfare.

After the first two waves of "localization" were completed intensively, the epidemic situation in the United States intensified. Around March 2020, Zhang Yiming, the President's Office, and Liu Zhen returned to China on a chartered flight. At this time, Zhang Yiming was already a technology tycoon with much attention in the world, and his every move could create headlines. He entered the country to quarantine, closed in a hotel, and directed the company through video in the turmoil.

After returning to China, Zhang Yiming quickly took further action. In May of this year, Byte Global announced a high-profile personnel appointment, and the Chinese and American technology circles were in an uproar. At Byte, Kevin Mayer was the first American to gain supreme power, not only as COO, but also as CEO of TikTok. The appointment took effect on June 1. Mayer's past exploits are built on Disney. In the kingdom of Mickey Mouse, he led the promotion of large acquisitions of Pixar Animation, Marvel and other large acquisitions, and launched the streaming media service Disney+, with remarkable results. Zhang Yiming pinned his American identity and local influence to help Byte mediate in the intricate American forces.

At the same time, "localization" proceeds to the third phase, and the migration target is the server. It seems that by this time the Trump administration has seen TikTok as an obstructionist on the road to re-election, and the drumbeat of the political storm has become more intense.

One person who participated in the TikTok Biweek meeting remembered that Zhu Wenjia, who was in charge of algorithm technology, said: "Algorithm code cutting takes two months. "Can you do it in 15 days?" Zhang Yiming couldn't wait. The answer is yes. The fourth and final wave of migrations is for products and technicians. TikTok executives, including Zhu Wenjia, have all been transferred to Singapore.

2020 is the year that Byte suffered a political twist. The pandemic has both unleashed a surge in TikTok and torn them apart. Before the U.S. turmoil stopped, their other S-class country, India, fell. In June, when Mayer first took office, the Indian government issued a ban.

Internally, Mayer convenes an all-hands meeting, which became byte's hasty plenum ever. In less than five minutes, Mayer told everyone not to worry, the Indian team is actively communicating, and the situation is not yet under control. However, he reneged on his word.

It is quite gratifying that India's second-ranked short video app is Kuaishou's Snap Video, with TikTok banned, its data ushered in a rapid climb, daily active rushed through the 150 million mark; but the hiccup did not last long, five months later it was also blocked in India.

Back on TikTok's side, the critical situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse – in July 2020, the U.S. government said it would ban TikTok; in August, Trump issued a 45-day ultimatum ordering TikTok to divest its U.S. business or close its doors. Mr. Zhang was forced to negotiate a sale that would include business giants such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Walmart, as well as U.S. investors in Byte. Zhang Yiming ostensibly participated in the spin-off negotiations, but secretly adhered to the belief that the world was a game of chess.

Less than three months into office, Mayer abruptly announced his departure. There are many opinions within the company, some people say that his calculation is to jointly sell TikTok in the US sector, which seems to be in his personal interest; others say that he is not so capable and simply "frightened". Vanessa Pappas, general manager of North America at TikTok, became transition CEO.

During this period, the three words that the company said the most from top to bottom were: geopolitics, Sino-US confrontation, and force majeure. In fact, 99.9% of people do not know what the company is going through, let alone where their personal destiny is going. The middle and high-level people who did not know it reassured the unsuspecting grassroots level: "Do your personnel and obey the destiny." ”

Zhu Junfa, an "Internet poet" who has become the head of Byte Strategy, said: "In this era of high walls, TikTok's mission is to build bridges so that people around the world can connect with each other and enjoy happiness. This generous statement inspired a group of people.

The confusing U.S. turmoil eventually eased Trump's campaign defeat. "It's a bit like what? I lay there motionless, feeling like they were going to 'die', and they were really 'dead'. An industry veteran who pays close attention to this incident said that with a slight step difference, Byte's assets in the United States have no return. Zhang Yiming objectively extended the time because of the negotiations and survived the US election. After the new US president Biden took office, he lifted the ban, thus avoiding disaster.

He believes that this incident is much more difficult than Byte's previous "dodging the pursuit and killing of giants" in China. It once wandered among the giants and fell in love with the giants, but did not fall into any camp, and practiced the skill of "left and right". In the TikTok incident, byte faces a more passive situation and a larger game object, "it is like a leaf of duckweed in the sea." The person used the analogy of a car driving into a narrow alley in Beijing, so that everyone did not expect: "It passed through once, this time it drove in, and then came out again." ”

Governments have mixed controls on data security. In order not to risk it again, Byte has set up an unusually strict isolation mechanism. According to legal sources familiar with this, for sensitive data such as personal accounts, addresses, social security cards, and consumption records, the general principle is that "China's data is in China, and overseas data is overseas." In the United States, Europe, Singapore, etc., TikTok has data centers. Which data centers flow into different parts of the world will be based on the law first, and then according to the principle of proximity. For example, in the United States, where the situation is exceptional, even if other data centers are more geographically dominant, data will not flow out of the U.S. border.

"It's a huge project." A person close to the top level of Byte said that the company spent a lot of money to improve this matter, isolating data from all levels, encrypting data, and designing high-complexity verification mechanisms so that people with different permissions "can support the work and cannot see the data."

Byte has also become the most thoroughly localized Chinese technology company. "No Internet company in China can rely on local so much." An employee said. Even the middle office that relies on headquarters must be localized, such as the user growth middle office that has mastered the growth key, which is actually difficult to recruit overseas. But the U.S., U.K., Japan, Brazil, and Germany all have growth strategy teams. Some markets also let the teams on both sides PK for a period of time.

The purpose of this is not to compete, but to replace training with competition, so that Chinese help locals grow. This is the most painful thing. The Chinese team expands the market, accumulates methodologies, and then they personally recruit local teams and pass on their skills. I knew that the result was "beating the teacher to death with a fist.". "Every day we worry about whether it's going to come to us," one witness said, "but it's slowly infiltrating." ”

Chinese employees complain: "Their hard work is far less than Chinese, generally 965 (9 o'clock work, 6 o'clock off, 5 days of work)." "What the locals don't do, we do, they run into trouble, we have to wipe our butts." And now, "TikTok basically does not recruit people in China, and those who cannot be recruited from abroad are recruited in China."

Globalization has squeezed jobs Chinese. As a result of the huge "localization", a Chinese citizen has probably three options if he wants to be on the big ship of byte internationalization. One is to change the permanent location to Singapore, Los Angeles, etc., so that you can access local data; the second is to take a US green card and access local data through a VPN, but there are permission restrictions; the third is to move from the core department of access to data to a zone that does not have to rely on data, relatively leaving the decision center.

Having gone through political adventures, although they know that localization is the right path and the only way to go, they are still the sad people on this fleet. Soon, the sad man disembarked.

09 Fleet on the Great Waves

After escaping from the political wrangling and realizing that Mayer's appointment was a mistake, Zhang Yiming further pondered his global fleet. Organizational structure is a delicate exercise, and the flash of the eye behind the lens is a measure of human nature.

After May 2021, TikTok is neither Chinese Zhang Nan, Zhu Jun, nor Americans Mayer and Papas. Zhang Yiming hand-picked Zhou Shouzi, who has chinese ancestry, Singaporean nationality, British and American study background, and a handsome and amiable oriental face, to serve as the general manager of TikTok. Many employees tell me that this is the result of careful consideration and the result of a comprehensive "balance". "A balance has been found between the West and China."

Upon his arrival, Zhou Yuzi gave a speech at the all-hands meeting, and his handsome appearance and elite background captured people's hearts. Employees who did not come to the scene watched the video, and the comment area appeared: "Good handsome", "Face value critical hit", "Put the avatar to the maximum". "It's perfect to be funded." One employee said.

Some employees shrugged and said that he was just talking about "slices of soup". "I've listened to it three times."

The script is always: going to school in Singapore, joining the army, going to university in the UK; an opportunity to meet the famous Russian boss Yuri Milner, who spent five years at DST, investing in Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Didi, Ali, etc.; and then receiving an offer from Harvard Business School, despite Yuri's retention to return to school, Yuri made a mouth-watering big order during this period, expressing envy and regret. "It's a bit of Versailles, but not annoying." Of course, he focused on how he met Zhang Yiming. The speech was also mixed with a little bit of personal bridge to meet a life partner, which boosted the good feelings.

On the fleet pyramid, Zhou Yuzi was at the top. As the chief helmsman, he had two of the most important generals under his command: Zhu Wenjia, a Chinese, and Papas, an American. Zhu Wenjia led the production and research, and Papas was in charge of the regional general manager (GM), who spent his energy on localization operations.

More intuitively, Zhu Wenjia is in charge of most of the Chinese, and Papas is in charge of most foreigners; Zhou Iszi is above the two, and with his diverse and elegant figure, he controls and balances Chinese and foreigners.

Let's look at the left half of the fleet's map.

Zhu Wenjia has dark skin, wears black-rimmed glasses, and is an old byte employee. He first reported to Yang Zhenyuan, the head of the recommended algorithm middle office, and was responsible for Data IES (Interactive Entertainment Community). This high-level technical leader who was cultivated in byte culture has a similar charm to Zhang Yiming. He once said at an internal sharing session that he couldn't drive and thought it was a waste of time. He took a taxi to work. For an hour and a half round-trip day after day, Zhu Wenjia would sit in the back seat of a taxi and study her thesis. Every two weeks, I can finish a good doctoral dissertation. The doctoral dissertation is more systematic and in-depth than the literature, and is a full English reading of more than 100 pages.

On byte's managerial ladder, it was TikTok that made him take a big step forward. When Douyin was far from flying Yellow Tengda, Zhu Wenjia, as a middle-office personnel, led the team to settle in to do the recommendation algorithm, and achieved the growth of "armed to the teeth". When Douyin's daily active activity exceeded 100 million, he got the highest performance "O" (outstanding) byte. Only those who have made outstanding contributions to the company can receive this award, and it is said that the year-end bonus can be won for a hundred months - many colleagues mention this, thinking that it will be a huge amount of water. Then, Zhu Wenjia took the initiative to transform to the product and became the CEO of today's headlines. Everyone knows that today's headline growth has long been stagnant, and the rise of vibrato has even eroded the headlines in reverse. However, with this training ground, Zhu Wenjia has grown from simply recommending the person in charge of the algorithm to a leader with both product and technical capabilities. In February 2021, Zhu Wenjia turned to TikTok with a legendary color.

The map goes down to the next level, and several key people report to Zhu Wenjia's solid line or dotted line, namely:

Liang Yuming, head of R&D (former head of Hulu China's data and advertising team), reported the solid line to Hong Dingkun, the head of the byte project, and the dotted line to Zhu Wenjia.

Recommend the person in charge of the algorithm Xu Jie, and report to Zhu Wenjia on the solid line.

The product leader talked about Siqi (who had worked for Huobi and Xiaohongshu), and the solid line reported to Zhu Wenjia.

Wang Liding, the person in charge of the content painting style, reported to Zhu Wenjia on the solid line.

Wang Yinglei, head of live broadcasting (former entrepreneur and worked at Snapchat), the solid line reported to Han Shangyou, the head of byte live broadcasting, and the dotted line reported to Zhu Wenjia.

Liu Hanyu, head of growth (who worked for Baidu and Tencent), reported to Zhao Qi, head of byte user growth center, and didtted line to Zhu Wenjia.

During Zhu Jun's time, TikTok had two favored product leaders: Adam Wang and Tan Siqi. Yinglei Wang previously led strategy at TikTok, which included "national" and operational products (content understanding and content painting style); Talk squire in charge of product nature.

Byte is a company that is keen to promote young people, and Wang and Tan can represent the typical portrait of such people - the post-90s generation, the winner who came out of the education selection system, the returnee of the famous school, smart and clever; especially important is to maintain a sincere heart for the company. Also more obedient.

Among them, Wang Yinglei single-handedly built a "national" product manager team, accommodating more than ten people and playing a bridge. They stand horizontally in The GM Central in China and around the world, channeling differentiation and sentiment, and shouldering business indicators. But the team is like an intermediate form of power transition from China to overseas, and Zhu Wenjia is already dead by the time he takes office. Currently, Wang Yinglei is in charge of TikTok Live; Wang Leadsanding takes over the rest of his operational products (content understanding and content style).

Let's look at the right half of the map.

Papas has short blond hair and is a tall, powerful woman. "Her aura makes you feel like a Hollywood star." She has a strong personality and a meticulous style, and is one of the few professional managers in the United States who works diligently and can swallow the bitter fruit of the Chinese 996 enterprise. Byte dug her up from YouTube.

Employees recall that in the United States, once at nightfall, in a huge office that could accommodate one or two hundred people on the first floor, people were empty. In the end, in the empty house, only three Chinese employees, Papas and security guards were left. "Almost seven or eight days are such a state, nine or ten o'clock to leave work, the first soldier," the single Chinese employee sighed, "the Americans really don't look at the boss's face, not a single GM has gone, the people below have gone." ”

Under Papas, most of those who reported to her were Local GM, which held local jurisdiction:

The general manager of North America (US, Australia, Canada) is served by Papas.

Rich Waterworth, General Manager of Europe (excluding Eastern Europe), is a large white man with black-rimmed glasses. At the end of 2020, he published an open letter in the British "Evening Standard" that Europe had more than 100 million monthly active people.

The Australian general manager is Lee Hunter, who worked at Google for more than a decade as Head of Global Branding at YouTube and was also the CEO of an ASEX-listed company.

Japan General Manager Yoichi Sato, a Japanese who has worked at Google and Yahoo for many years, is a veteran who has witnessed the changes in Japanese marketing.

Qi Xiangqian, general manager of Eastern Europe, is a rare Chinese in GM, has Russian experience, and was the head of Alibaba Culture Media Russia.

·……

Above TikTok's fleet, there was one other special exception— Erich Andersen. Andersen is an American, with white hair, over half a hundred years old. He serves as Byte Global General Counsel, overseeing legal affairs, government relations, and public relations. In fact, he took over most of Liu Zhen's power map (Liu Zhen left in May 2020). Andersen was shrouded in a mysterious aura. An employee specifically pointed to his name and said to me, "He can get straight to Zhang Yiming." ”

At Byte, Andersen didn't immediately show his talents. Thanks to the political storm, he helped byte sue the US government and win Zhang Yiming's trust. Andersen worked for Microsoft, from a legal officer to a senior level, as the chief intellectual property consultant. People who know him well say That Andersen, based in New York, is a majestic and kind leader who tends to understand and encourage his employees. Compared with Liu Zhen, he is more experienced in the global vision - in the past, he helped American companies enter the Chinese market, and now helps Chinese companies try to make the American market bigger. He may be able to act as a ballast stone for the fleet to withstand great waves.

In addition, TikTok's business leader Blake Chandlee and CSO Roland Cloutier also reported to Zhou. Before 2021, TikTok did not emphasize commercial indicators such as ad load, and focused on growth; after 2021, TikTok accelerated commercial monetization, which made Chandlee play an increasingly important role. His global sales team is like Zhang Lidong's army in Byte China.

In this elaborately crafted structure, Byte has set up some additional mechanisms with good intentions, both to balance human nature and accelerate the operation of this giant fleet.

In the past two years, Byte has emphasized the "virtual and real double-line reporting" mechanism. Among them, the balance between the middle office and each business line is the top priority. Take the user growth middle office - the head of European growth, the solid line reports to Zhao Qi, the head of the user growth middle office, and the dotted line reports to Rich Waterworth, the general manager of Europe, which can "make Rich feel safe."

An analyst who has studied TikTok said that the essence of byte global management is "manageable and open". For example, in India, TikTok has done basically all the small languages. This is something that only locals can do – both organizational tolerance and error correction capabilities.

The wind of PMO (project management) has also been popular in Byte in the past two years. Enterprises are expanding too fast, and departmental walls and poor communication have emerged. PMO is a means of confrontation. Project management personnel, serving specific projects, managing project planning, scheduling, and acting as "fire captains" in case of emergencies. They are like small motors on the fleet, lubricants on the main engine. After Zhu Wenjia arrived, he set up a PMO department (Project Manage Office) and set up more than 20 project teams.

PMO gives business agility. In April 2021, Kuaishou Overseas ushered in a wave of growth by fissioning by throwing coins. TikTok set up a special project to block Kuaishou to support user growth in the middle office. They stare at the national rankings and spend money to implement the "list suppression" directive. TikTok gradually regained the lead.

However, many of the seemingly high-powered managers on this fleet hold "limited power." The person who really holds the power keeps himself in mysterious safety at all times. The company has set up an information layering mechanism.

The GM, which seems to be on its own, has no right to look at the s/a/b/c rating of the governing country, especially when the bottom of the level is b/c/other; the company will not let them know how much budget they have allocated to other countries. These can breed internal imbalances and add to the management blockage - byte one hand sweeps the barriers to ensure smooth operation; the other hand buries the barriers, putting power under the control of a very small number of people.

10 plaid shirts, mooncakes, cosmic bars

In the sea fleet, Zhou Waszi was the fifth helmsman. Zhang Yiming always knows what kind of people to reuse at what stage.

Professional managers are lined up one after another - Zhou Jingjin and Liu Xinhua have tried and made mistakes for him on the road of internationalization; Liu Zhen has helped him build early connections; Zhang Nan and Zhu Jun have alternately straightened out products for him, especially Zhu Jun has stitched up a part of the cultural barrier; originally pinned on Using Mayer's American identity to level the US government, but the plan has failed; Papas has temporarily filled the position in the crisis. Employees have long been accustomed to the high-level coming and going, summarizing it as "completing the phased mission". Now, the ship is in the hands of Zhou's capital.

At first, business people worried that Zhou only understood finance, strategy and investment, and lacked understanding of the business, but after a while they found that it was "a little more than expected". Moreover, zhou's emotional intelligence is very high. When he reached the byte, he made an imperceptible change.

The most notable one is that he immediately demoted from a suit and cfo style in Xiaomi to a plaid shirt. One employee even accurately told me that the change occurred in his second month on the job. Because in the first month, the company's hope for him was to let him send the company to the capital hall like xiaomi; but in the second month, Byte urgently announced the cancellation of the listing plan and the indefinite extension, and he immediately changed his style. "Like a chameleon."

In order to integrate into Zhang Yiming's culture, many employees observed that Zhou Shouzi quietly emptied Twitter and Instagram. "He's imitating, blending into the executives over here." His former employer, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, is a warm-hearted person who likes high-profile publicity, and Zhang Yiming is the opposite. Zhou Received Insight into this.

He rarely gives an opinion on the details of the business. But last year, he put forward a key direction to tackle the tough problems - "depoliticization". "Become a pure entertainment product." A person close to TikTok said.

Another thing he has pondered repeatedly is how to further debug organizations to reduce cultural shocks within the framework of globalization.

Among Chinese enterprises, ByteDance has become the content platform company that accommodates the most foreigners. Unlike Huawei, Xiaomi, these hardware companies are internationalized, sending Chinese to leave their hometowns, cross the ocean, and then comfort them with generous salaries; content products with cultural attributes, regional genes, and bytes to recruit a large number of locals. As a result, Chinese and foreigners have been in constant cultural conflict – even a few boxes of mooncakes can cause disputes.

Should the Mid-Autumn Festival only give mooncakes to Chinese employees, or should it be distributed to employees around the world without discrimination?

In the past, the byte was selected from the previous one. A group of foreign employees complained of being treated unfairly. Later, Byte learned to be smart, sending out questionnaires in advance, so that overseas employees voluntarily chose whether to want mooncakes or not. This is blameless – it's both warmth and a twist. Unexpectedly, another group of employees led by Americans stood up and questioned: "This is spreading Chinese culture." "Later the company appeased them.

Chinese collectivism and easier to obey; Americans pay attention to the individual from an early age and have a strong sense of individuality. This forced TikTok to exorcise demons on the way to the sea, and on the other hand, to do spiritual massage in line with the unique cultures and values of various countries , which is a new topic for most Chinese companies.

Some employees said that Byte Overseas, especially American employees, think in their hearts that they work for TikTok, not ByteDance. One characterization is that their LinkedIn generally only write TikTok posts and do not mention ByteDance.

Therefore, Byte attaches great importance to the management of overseas personnel. The TikTok China All-Staff Meeting is sometimes postponed for various reasons, but the U.S. All-Staff Will Be Guaranteed on Time. At the same time, Byte has internal communication personnel in each region. Overseas employees often ask questions about corporate responsibility, human rights, gender equality, racial equality, and communication personnel should coordinate and edit answers according to local characteristics. In order to cope with the challenges of global management, in 2020, Zhang Yiming added a new article to byte's cultural code: multi-compatibility.

"TikTok is a great example of globalization," a principal analyst at a well-known brokerage told me, "and many overseas users don't necessarily know which country TikTok is." ”

Byte Internationalization has no headquarters. Although the news frequently exposed their consideration of setting up a new headquarters, it has not been left behind. "It's not decided yet, and there may not be a headquarters." Some employees talked. Even Singapore – where Zhou Shouzi, Zhu Wenjia, and important industry and research personnel are stationed – has no headquarters. Like the binder effect, Singapore is a balance between Eastern and Western civilizations.

Step by step, TikTok grew into a giant virtual network of indistinct nodes, hovering over the globe.

In terms of data, TikTok once struggled to catch up with Douyin. Just as it was about to approach, India was suddenly banned, and the daily life fell by more than 100 million. It took more than a year for TikTok to catch up again. According to a number of people familiar with the matter, as of the beginning of 2022, TikTok daily active has exceeded 700 million, and "the growth rate is still very fast." And Douyin has rarely grown in the past year, with about 670 million daily active users, and TikTok has surpassed it as desired. The two merged, and this product broke 1.3 billion daily active days worldwide. At the same time, its download volume surpassed that of the overlord Facebook, ranking first in the world's social products.

Organizationally, Byte is undergoing a shift from a mid-office drive to a division drive. In the context of diluting the middle office and strengthening the business department, Zhao Qi, the head of the user growth middle office, handed over the growth of mature domestic business to the various business departments, and only brought overseas growth; at the same time, he took over the commercial product pangolin, and he was also included in Zhang Lidong's system. "The head of the department that spends the most money starts to commercialize, and UG becomes a secondary department." People close to the commercialization of bytes believe that this is not only in line with the environment of reducing cost efficiency and de-fatming and thinning, but also reflects the evolution of TikTok's commercial stage.

After leaping over the most exciting "inflection point" in the four stages of business, TikTok no longer relies on the UG middle platform, and the growth flywheel can naturally rotate, and comes to the final stage: accelerated commercialization. At present, there is still a lot of room for commercialization of TikTok. According to foreign media reports, TikTok's revenue may reach $11 billion in 2022. According to the above-mentioned person, there is a more aggressive target internally, between $11 billion and $20 billion.

And the biggest risk remains geopolitics.

Looking back, after the birth of Douyin and TikTok, the number of Byte employees exploded from 3,000 to more than 130,000 (including outsourcing), more than 40 times; the valuation soared from $11 billion to nearly $400 billion, a 36-fold increase. It "took off" from the low building where the helicopter could be parked. The company, which constantly preaches shrinking the ego, has a spectacular title: cosmic bar.

In mid-2021, due to the gratifying data of Douyin and TikTok, Byte held a small-scale celebration. According to people familiar with the matter, when reporting to the US shareholders, the president's office staff brought a small cake with a lit candle on it. Although Zhang Yiming did not like such a cheesy situation, he still reached over and blew out the candle.

After completing the global expansion at a high speed, Zhang Yiming has stepped down as CEO and retired to the second line at the end of 2021. Liang Rubo, the current CEO of ByteDance, has followed Zhang Yiming to start a business from the university dormitory, and is a more modest, introverted and low-key co-founder than Zhang Yiming. Insiders reminded me that Liang Rubo is a technical background, which is conducive to ByteDance's global brand image. His English has improved greatly, and he has answered with foreigners like a stream. Moreover, the accent is much smaller than Zhang Yiming.

Finally, drag the timeline back to Christmas 2010. This is the second year that Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo founded the previous company, Jiujiufang. On this day, Zhang Yiming just finished watching the movie that has influenced a generation of mobile Internet entrepreneurs - Zuckerberg's biopic "Social Network". He clicked on the Douban App and typed a short comment: "The most impressive word about The Social Network is paranoia. He gave the film a four-star recommendation.

A year and three months later, Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance. For many years afterward, Facebook was buried in his heart. But now, he doesn't mention the company so often.

Just as Zhang Yiming led TikTok to go against the waves, in this world, if you are not swallowed by desire, maybe you can swallow desire in one bite.