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Early March 2020, Zhang Yiming, the CEO of BYTE, issued an internal letter in the company announcing the adjustment of BYTE’s structure. Zhang Lidong and Zhang Nan headed the China region, and Zhang Yiming himself was responsible for the development of the globalization strategy.

The global expansion of bytebeat has a long history. The company, which has been established for only eight years, has offices in more than 180 cities in 30 countries and has more than 60,000 employees in a short period of time. By the end of 2019, ByteDance’s products have more than 1.5 billion monthly active users worldwide, and the business covers 150 countries and regions and 75 languages. Overseas, Tik Tok has also become a trend, synonymous with a new generation of young people’s fashion culture.

Does this major organizational restructuring this month herald a shift in byte bounce to the global market at a greater pace? Before that, what kind of internationalization has it gone through? Compared with other new-generation Internet companies in China, how does byte-beating go overseas? Let ’s take a closer look!

People ’s friends use Tik Tok to promote their own store on Facebook

2015-2016: The initial test of internationalization, using investment and mergers to strengthen the news recommendation business

Today’s Headlines Going Overseas: Launching Overseas TopBuzz

The initial international test of Byte Beat was launched in August 2015, and the official TopBuzz overseas version of Today’s Headline was officially released. This is a content platform that showcases videos, articles, breaking news and GIFs. After launch, it first entered the US market and entered the Brazilian market in 2016.

In September 2016, Byte Beat released the Japanese version of TopBuzz. Unlike Apple or Google News, many of the content in TopBuzz is published by news release agencies or individual creators, and can provide users with personalized push through AI.

TopBuzz’s overseas version of today’s headlines, pictures from the Internet

Invest in DailyHunt, an Indian content integration platform, and BABE, an Indonesian news recommendation system

In October 2016, ByteDance invested in DailyHunt, India’s largest content integration platform, a mobile application that can provide a variety of content in more than 14 Indian languages ​​from more than 1,000 content providers. Became India’s largest e-book publisher at the end of 2015. In December 2016, BYTE invested in Indonesia’s news recommendation system BABE, which is Indonesia’s most popular news integration platform.
< p class = "img-desc"> Daily Hunt, a local news integration platform in India, pictures from the Internet

2017-2018: Layout of short video business, officially entered the European and American markets

2017 is the year that ByteDance started to initially engage in short video sharing in the form of investment: shortly after the establishment of Douyin, in February 2017, ByteDance acquired the American Flipagram, which allows users to share Short video and picture applications with music have tens of millions of monthly active users worldwide.

In September 2017, the international version of Douyin was released. In November 2017, ByteDance acquired APP Music.ly, which is established in China and mainly focuses on the U.S. market. At the same time, it acquired the news sharing platform News Republic from Cheetah Mobile to further expand the layout of personalized recommendation news. These acquisitions and investments helped fledgling Douyin gain more operating experience and international markets.

In August 2018, Byte Beat integrated Music.ly into Tik Tok, and the combined Tik Tok immediately gained 30 million users in just three months.

In the Southeast Asian market, the pace of byte bounce is also continuing. In July 2017, itsSoutheast Asia has released the UGC short video platform Hypstar (Vigo Video); Hypstar is a social network of short videos that can share their lives with loved ones and friends in the form of short videos rendered with special effects cameras and stickers.

2019-Now: further expand the international market and strengthen the export of products

Tik Tok’s internationalization has been very successful despite many cultural and regulatory issues. In the United States, Tik Tok has become the most popular app, with 46 million downloads in 2019. At the same time, Tik Tok successfully entered the markets of India, Russia, Japan, Turkey and other countries.

While further consolidating and expanding the internationalized market, Byte Beat also applies its international operating experience and core technology to new products to create localized products for the international market.

In India and Southeast Asian markets, ByteDance began testing and releasing its music streaming application Resso in December 2y019. On March 4, 2020, the company officially released the app, calling it a “social music streaming app.” Resso allows users to highlight and share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content, as well as stream full-length tracks. Resso has signed licensing agreements with well-known music companies such as Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

From the perspective of ByteDance’s development history from 2015 to the present, it has similar growth strategies to other emerging Internet companies in China, that is, to achieve large-scale growth through the large domestic market capacity and demographic dividend, and Use the successful experience of the Chinese market to expand to other developing countries and culturally similar Asian markets.

Applying this strategy, Didi and Kuaishou are the most successful companies in developing international business.

Didi: deepening the layout of the Latin American market and establishing a Japanese joint venture with SoftBank

After maintaining its foothold in the Chinese market, Didi has begun to expand into the Latin American market and currently has more than 2 million active users in Latin America. Didi employees responsible for the Latin American market account for 10% of the entire company.

In January 2018, after Didi invested $ 100 million in Brazil’s ride-hailing application 99, it then spent $ 900 million to acquire the company. At the end of 2018, Didi entered Mexico and launched its own application DiDi Rider locally. In February 2019, Didi launched its own takeaway business DiDi Food in Mexico.

At the same time, for the Japanese market, Didi and SoftBank have established joint ventures in Japan, expanding taxi services to 13 cities outside Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo.

For the North American market, Didi’s business has not been smooth. Although in 2016, Didi shared with LyftDidi launched “Didi Overseas”, serving Chinese tourists and covering 200 cities in the United States. But in early 2017, services in the United States have been completely suspended due to app upgrades from Didi and Lyft. At present, Didi’s business in the United States is only at the American Research Institute in Mountain View, which is committed to the development of new technologies through the acquisition of talents, and long-term understanding and penetration of the market.

DiDi Food’s takeaway service in Mexico, pictures from the Internet

Quick start: rapid development at the beginning, inadequate strategy formulation leads to loss to the sea

As early as 2017, Quick Hands set up a sea going team to test water in Thailand, Russia, South Korea and Indonesia. Different from the domestic fast-handed application, the fast-handed international version is Kwai. By recording video and matching the soundtrack of film and television works to achieve the effect of performance.

Without a large-scale market launch, Kushou initially achieved good results in Korea and Russia. Kwai, under the guidance of various Korean stars, once occupied the first place in the download ranking of Korean app stores for eight consecutive days in October 2017. In May 2017, it entered the Russian mobile application market and reached the top of the mobile application list in only one year.

However, in 2018, due to the fact that Kuaishou has not intervened in the distribution of traffic, its products have grown freely, and no complete strategy has been formulated for the local market. At the same time, the fast-moving teams in Southeast Asia and India lost a lot, and they stopped serving content and advertisements in Southeast Asia and India. So the fast hand was once frustrated in the field of going to sea.

But in Brazil and the U.S., the fast players have achieved relatively better results. In the Brazilian market, in order to provide Brazilian users with high-quality products that are truly in line with local culture, Quick Hands is equipped with a dedicated operation team and has achieved great success in the Brazilian market. By November 2019, Kwai ’s DAU in Brazil had reached 7 million.

In the United States, Kuaishou and Didi have adopted a similar approach. A laboratory has been set up in Seattle to recruit talents in North America and to penetrate the North American market for a long time.

Fast Brazilian local product vStatus, picture from the Internet

Although the early strategy is similar to these new-generation Internet companies, ByteDance has not maintained a restrained style in the market development of developed countries.

Since 2015, BYTE has been trying to enter the European and American markets, and has continuously introduced new products. At the same time, it has integrated into its own product matrix through investment and acquisition of similar products in the European and American markets. The acquisition of Flipgram and Music.ly in 2017 was a turning point in the success of ByteDance in the European and American markets, which established the emergence and development of Douyin Overseas.

At present, Tik Tok has successfully entered the Western market, and the byte jump has also accumulated successful experience in entering the European and American markets. As of December 2019, TikTok’s cumulative downloads on the App Store and Google Play exceeded 1.5 billion, and it has been in the top five of the world’s top mobile app (non-game) annual downloads for two consecutive years.

Architecture adjustment: optimize management mechanism and tools to promote global business development

From the perspective of the adjustment of the organizational structure, this is a reflection of the phased success of the internationalization of BYTE. It is also a larger organizational management challenge ushered in by rapid development. In an internal letter from BYTE CEO Zhang Yiming in early March, he stated that he will continue to optimize and adjust the organization and cooperation methods, and update the internal management mechanism and tools, while strengthening the construction of Chinese business and further improving the company’s global business. development of.

Adjustment of the organizational structure means that opportunities and challenges coexist for byte bounce. In terms of challenges, countries face a variety of environments. Policies, regulations, and cultures around the world are very different. As a global platform, they must also abide by the laws and regulations of each country and respect the culture and customs of each country. Therefore, it is especially important to understand the local national culture and develop a local operating model. At the same time, unified management of offices around the world on the basis of respect for differences means greater responsibility.

From the perspective of opportunities, on the one hand, the development of byte jumps in the markets of multiple countries is conducive to achieving more levels of market expansion and generating more unique profit models. On the other hand, this is conducive to forming a more diversified product matrix in multiple countries, allowing each country’s products and operating experience to learn from each other, so as to achieve a healthy and sustainable comprehensive development.

What’s your opinion on the international development of byte bounce? What is your opinion on the internationalization of Chinese companies? Feel free to comment below!

Reference:

• https: //m.thepaper.cn/yidian_promDetail.jsp? contid = 6472747 & from = yidian

• https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/113050259

• https://www.tmtpost.com/4152644.html

• https://pandaily.com/short-video-platform-kwai-reaches-3-million-dau-in-brazil/

• https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tik-tok-statistics/

• https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/resso-music-india-bytedance/

• https://www.qdaily.com/articles/63378.html

• http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2017-11-30/doc-ifypikws8945867.shtml