Douyin no longer has a No. 1 position

Liang Rubo's words of "escaping the gravity of mediocrity" did not fall, and Zhang Nan became the unbearable weight of Douyin.

On January 30, Byte held a new all-staff meeting. Chairman and CEO Liang Rubo mentioned in his sharing that when he thought about this year's theme, the first key word that came to mind was "sense of crisis". He worries that bytes are becoming mediocre and that "all the big corporate diseases that should be there are gone."

In Liang Rubo's view, Byte needs to break complacency, raise standards, maintain a sense of crisis and always be entrepreneurial, and "escape the gravity of medecinality". He decided to list "strengthening the sense of crisis, always starting a business, and escaping the gravity of mediocrity" as Byte's first priority in 2024.

Liang Rubo did not say how to "escape the gravity of mediocrity". But one of the easiest ways to think of is to tilt more talent and resources towards new businesses that have room for imagination.

A week later, Douyin, the core component of bytes, ushered in personnel changes, and Zhang Nan, who had been at the helm for many years, stepped down and took charge of Douyin's video editing software "Jianying".

According to people familiar with the matter, in the past year, Zhang Nan has tilted most of his energy to Jianying-related business, personally leading the team to seek a breakthrough in AI-assisted creation, and will soon launch an AI picture and video product.

Zhang Nan - The picture comes from the official website of ByteDance

In addition, Byte does not plan to appoint a new TikTok CEO. Douyin managers Han Shangyou, Zhang Chao and others, who previously reported to Zhang Nan, will report to Zhang Lidong, chairman of Byte and in charge of commercialization.

Currently, Douyin remains one of the fastest-growing internet services, but it also faces multiple internal and external challenges. The growth rate of its users and businesses has slowed as it scales, and Douyin faces stiff competition from companies such as Alibaba, Pinduoduo, Tencent and Meituan in areas such as e-commerce, advertising and local life.

The bigger problem is that the imagination of the short video track in which Douyin is located is being exhausted. Live streaming and in-feed advertising have become recognized as the most efficient ways to monetize traffic, and it is difficult for short video platforms to achieve higher ROI even if they play new tricks. This means that the development paradigm and monetization model of the short video industry are basically fixed, and the entire track has entered a mature period.

In this case, Byte is more willing to send Douyin's elite soldiers to new businesses, and Zhang Nan is the most critical role.

Zhang Nan turned to Jianying after stepping down as CEO of Douyin, and this software has the opportunity to become a tentacle for Douyin to explore AI. At present, Jianying already has some AI creation functions, such as users can input a piece of text, Jianying can automatically match pictures and music for it, and output a short video with acceptable results.

Liang Rubo said in an internal letter, "AI technology will greatly subvert content creation, and even create new creation platforms, and we hope to actively explore, fully understand and grasp the opportunities." ”

A

When announcing Zhang Nan's departure, Liang Rubo said that Zhang Nan led the team "from 0 to 1 to launch products that are popular with users, such as Douyin and Jianying." ”

Zhang Nan joined Byte in 2014 and led the team to launch Douyin in 2016. Two years later, Douyin surpassed Kuaishou and became the first in the field of short videos in China, and the gap continued to widen. With this record, Zhang Nan was appointed CEO of Douyin Group in 2020 and became one of the byte management, reporting to Zhang Yiming and his successor Liang Rubo.

In the organizational structure adjustment at the end of 2021, Toutiao, Xigua Video, Search, Encyclopedia and domestic vertical services were merged into Douyin, and the latter's content ecology and potential user pool were greatly expanded.

Over the past two years, Douyin seems to have found new growth momentum. According to "LatePost", the DAU of Douyin (including the speed version and the volcano version) is currently more than 800 million, a significant increase from 600 million more than three years ago.

To this day, Douyin is still firmly at the forefront of the industry. It provides abundant traffic for the entire byte, advertising and e-commerce revenue from Douyin is the cash cow of the entire byte, and in the field of local life, Douyin continues to erode Meituan's share, and even indirectly leads to Meituan changing the person in charge.

From the perspective of Douyin's business development, although there are still many problems, the overall performance is significantly better than that of other Internet companies. Zhang Nan hung up the seal this time, which can be described as a "crime of non-war".

It's just that Douyin itself has reached the moment to make drastic adjustments.

At the all-hands meeting at the end of last month, Liang Rubo clearly pointed out that Byte's current business has a very large inertia, and even if you don't work hard, you can rely on inertia to slide for a long time, which is very dangerous.

Liang Rubo did not say which businesses are "sliding", but the growth of some of Douyin's businesses is showing signs of deceleration. In May 2023, Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin e-commerce, revealed that Douyin e-commerce GMV increased by 80% year-on-year in the past year, but it was recently reported that Douyin e-commerce's GMV growth rate in 2023 will be about 40%.

Liang Rubo also gave a few examples. For example, after an employee leaves his job to join a start-up company, he says that in the new company, he has done the work that can only be completed in six months in bytes.

In another example, the Byte team lowered the bar, and the results of work that might have been evaluated as "okay" were now "very good", "not very good" became "okay", and "very bad" became "not bad".

Tencent's "Periscope" previously quoted insiders as saying that inside Byte, "Zhang Nan is the defender, she is fully responsible for Douyin, and everyone else is the attacker." This also means that even if he has gradually faded out of Douyin's first-line business, Zhang Nan still needs to take overall responsibility for the performance of Douyin as a whole.

What's more, after 2020, Zhang Nan's role is more of a manager. So when there are serious cultural problems up and down the company's team, Zhang Nan may be blameless as the helmsman of the business, but as a manager, he is to blame.

B

At this year's all-staff meeting, Liang Rubo specifically criticized Zhang Nan's upcoming screening.

Liang Rubo said that Jianying's auto-renewal function was canceled by user feedback, and the company discovered this problem early on, but it took a year to solve it. This, he believes, is a sign of "sluggishness".

As an experienced manager within Bytes, it is not difficult for Zhang Nan to solve such work attitude problems after taking office. The real challenge for Zhang Nan is how to cultivate the flowers of generative AI technology in the one-acre and three-point land of Jianying.

Byte will begin to focus on AI large models in 2023, and a number of products have been launched in the past year. In December last year, Byte established a new department, Flow, which is specifically responsible for AI innovation business, with Zhu Wenjia, head of TikTok product technology and head of the large model team, as the business leader, and Hong Dingkun, vice president of technology, as the technical leader.

Previously, the Flow division has launched two AI dialogue products, Doubao and Cici, respectively for domestic and foreign markets, and several AI innovative products are being incubated.

On February 1, Byte launched Coze, an AI chatbot building platform, which can quickly create, debug, and optimize AI chatbots. Coze also provides a Bots store and plugins where users can publish their own AI bots to the store.

In the case that other teams have already come up with products, it is not easy for Zhang Nan and Jianying to develop AI. Especially in the environment of byte cost reduction and efficiency increase, Jianying also faces the potential challenge of "reinventing the wheel".

But Jianying also has its own advantages - it is deeply bound to Douyin, and creators have become accustomed to editing videos with Jianying. Focusing on the subdivision of video editing, Jianying can develop customized AI models and integrate them more deeply with Douyin, so as to further reduce the cost of content creation and serve the Douyin ecosystem.

At present, Jianying has provided a variety of AI-related functions, such as generating short videos based on text, converting not very clear videos into high-definition videos with one click, intelligently tracking the movement trajectory of the subject, and generating TVB Hong Kong dialect timbre commentary with one click, most of which need to be used by VIP members. This also provides a commercialization opportunity for Jianying to do AI.

However, the alphabet list (ID: wujicaijing) found that the current effect of Jianying generative AI is not ideal. Taking "AI mapping" as an example, the pictures selected by Jianying often do not conform to the scene depicted in the text, and the final film is not satisfactory.

On the other hand, Douyin has added AI creation functions at the end of last year, and has set up topics such as "everyone is an AI artist" to encourage users to participate in creation. Compared with the use of Jianying, the threshold for users to create AI in Douyin is lower, and the use process is more convenient, and there is a certain substitution.

However, in less than two months, Douyin's "Everyone is an AI Artist" has accumulated more than 4.7 billion plays, indicating that users' enthusiasm for AI creation is quite high. For Jianying, which is deeply bound to Douyin, the huge potential user base is undoubtedly good news.

C

Transferring the No. 1 position of the core business with high weight to the new business is the "traditional culture" of bytes, and even Zhang Yiming has followed this habitual practice.

Today's headlines are ByteDance's first trump card products. Since its launch in 2012, it has gone through five managers, namely Zhang Yiming, Chen Lin, Zhu Wenjia, Chen Xi and Zhang Chao. In the hands of Zhang Yiming, Toutiao broke through the cracks of BAT, and finally let Byte replace Baidu and become the third pole of China's Internet.

By the end of 2018, Zhang Yiming handed over the position of CEO of Toutiao to Chen Lin and focused more on Douyin. In March 2020, Zhang Yiming appointed Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan as chairman and CEO of Byte China respectively, and he himself will spend more time and energy in Europe, the United States and other markets, which is equivalent to shifting his focus to TikTok.

Now, Zhang Nan has made a similar choice. She stepped down from TikTok, which is at the heart of bytes, and switched to Jianying, which is relatively marginal, but linked to generative AI.

By making this arrangement, Byte can facilitate the internal mobility of talented people, allowing the best players to support those businesses that are underperforming.

Tencent's "Periscope" previously reported that an insider believes that Zhang Nan is good at single-point breakthroughs and getting head resources. During her time on Douyin, she took the lead in making doll face changing effects, and also facilitated Luo Yonghao to sign a contract to settle in. Some people also said that Zhang Nan is good at mobilizing and gathering resources - "the company can be mobilized, and the company is trying to pry it outside the company".

Luo Yonghao

In addition, a middle-level person from Byte said, "She (Zhang Nan) is a very ambitious person, and she also has a strong sense of patience and persistence. Zhang Nan is strong in business decision-making and "is a very powerful person." One employee recalled: "Often, after a long day of discussion, she would go up and say, 'I don't agree, next.'" ”

For Jianying, who is a tool positioning, Zhang Nan's presence will bring more resources and a higher degree of attention. And Jianying was developed under the leadership of Zhang Nan, and it didn't take time to run in to lead the team in person.

On the other hand, the change of positions of heroes like Zhang Nan is also conducive to the internal management of bytes.

Byte is already a big company, and many of the cruxes of large companies are directly related to the pride and gangs of executives who have made contributions. Since Zhang Yiming, the byte managers have been rolling in different positions, which is conducive to breaking the rigidity of power structure and benefit distribution, improving the activity and clarity of the enterprise management ecology, and maintaining healthy development.

However, Zhang Nan is not from a technical or product background, and his longboard is management and operation. Jianying is a technology-biased product, and the development of AI requires the blessing of cutting-edge technical talents. As an "outsider", Zhang Nan still has many difficulties to overcome if he wants to manage a new team with technology as the core and do a good job in a new business that is highly dependent on technology.

In an internal email to step down as CEO of Douyin, Zhang Nan said, "I'm looking forward to dreaming with Jianying's friends, growing up with this era of AI, and drawing the fantasy world in my mind together." But considering the ultra-high difficulty of generative AI, the time span for Zhang Nan and the Jianying team to "make dreams" will be very long, and it is almost impossible to replicate the rapid progress of Douyin many years ago.

Resources:

Alphabet list, "Did the change of coach save today's headlines?"

Tencent Deep Web, "Zhang Nan stepped down as CEO of Douyin, Zhang Lidong walked to the front desk of bytes"

Tencent Periscope, "Douyin Insider: The Birth of the Time Melting Pot"

LatePost, "ByteDance All-Staff Meeting: Continue to Focus on Information Platforms and E-commerce; Feishu Volcano Still Has Opportunities; Make Every Effort to Attract Outstanding Talents"

Tiger Sniff, ""All the Diseases of Big Companies That Should Be Have", CEO Liang Rubo Talks About Bytes Entering Medioccrity"