China’s hottest news app Jinri Toutiao announces new CEO

You may not have heard of ByteDance, but “youre supposed to” know its red-hot video app TikTok, which gobbled up Musical.ly in August. The Beijing-based corporation too moves a popular story aggregator announced Jinri Toutiao, which entails” today’s headlines” in Chinese, and the app just assigned a new CEO.

At a company event on Saturday, Chen Lin, an early ByteDance employee, started his first appearance as Toutiao’s brand-new CEO. That symbolizes Toutiao’s developer Zhang Yiming has entrust the helm to Chen, who previously thoughts produce administration for the word app.

Zhang’s not going anywhere though. A corporation spokesperson told TechCrunch that he remains as the CEO of ByteDance, which operates a slay of media apps besides TikTok and Toutiao to lock horns with China’s tech monstrous Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.

The story of ByteDance started when Zhang originated Toutiao in 2012. The word app accumulates sections and videos from third-party providers and uses AI algorithms to personalize content for customers. Toutiao hovered off the shelves and soon went on to incubate new media products, including a Quora-like Q& A stage and TikTok, known as Douyin in China.

The handover may signal a need for Zhang to step back from daily operations in his brainchild and supervise programmes for ByteDance, which has swollen into the world’s highest-valued startup .~ ATAGEND The firm spokesperson did not provide further details on the reshuffle.

Toutiao itself is installed on over 240 million monthly distinct maneuvers, which establishes it a top information aggregator in China, according to data analytics firm iResearch. TikTok and Douyin collectively require 500 million monthly active users around the world, while Musical.ly has a userbase of 100 million, the company previously announced.

Toutiao’s success has inspired Tencent, which is best known for creating WeChat and controlling a large slice of China’s gaming marketplace, to build its own AI-powered news app. Toutiao’s fledgling advertising business has also stepped on the toes of Baidu, which clears the largest proportion of its income from pursuing ads. More recently, Toutiao muscled in on Alibaba’s territory with an ecommerce feature.

At the Saturday event, Chen also shared updates that hint at Toutiao’s growing ambition. For one, the report goliath is working to help content providers cash in through a collection of implements, for instance, ecommerce sales and virtual knacks from livestreaming. The move is poised to help Toutiao retain caliber authors as the scoot to grab digital eyeball time intensifies in China.

Toutiao also recently propelled its first beckon of” mini curricula ,” or stripped-down different versions of native apps that operate inside super apps like Toutiao. Tencent has proven the system to be a big traffic operator after WeChat mini curricula bridged two million daily customers .~ ATAGEND

Lastly, Toutiao said it will take more proactive measures to monitor what users expend. In recent months, the word app has run afoul of media regulators who slashed it for hosting illegal and “inappropriate” material. Douyin has faced same appraisals. While ByteDance prides itself on automated spread, the company has demonstrated a willingness to abide with authority regulations by hiring thousands of human censors and using AI to filter content.

Read more: feedproxy.google.com