ByteDance’s Toutiao Develops E-Commerce Service With Douyin
ByteDance-owned news and content aggregation platform Toutiao has announced recently that its livestreaming section will be wholly upgraded and that its streaming services will be provided by Douyin, the Chinese mainland version of TikTok.
Users and creators can migrate or integrate livestreaming rights of their Toutiao account into their Douyin account according to the platform’s rules. This means that the platform has become an important stream-diversion platform for Douyin.
Chinese media outlet Tech Planet said that Douyin livestreaming was quickly integrated into the platform shortly after the announcement. In the information recommendation on the app’s homepage, a livestreaming portal will appear for every five or six pieces of content browsed by users. More importantly, the currently recommended livestreaming content is mainly regarding e-commerce, meaning that users can shop in Toutiao’s livestreaming room just as they do in Douyin.
In addition, Tech Planet found that in order to undertake Douyin’s e-commerce services, the platform also provided the function of viewing Douyin’s e-commerce orders on users’ personal homepages, and allowed its users to access Douyin’s coupons shopping in its livestreaming room. This means that Toutiao is cooperating with Douyin to become a new e-commerce channel.
The core revenue of the platform comes from ads. But with the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, internet platforms’ ad revenue has been influenced to some extent. For these old content platforms, it is urgent to find a new way out.
SEE ALSO: Douyin E-Commerce GMV Increased 3.2 Times Year-on-Year
In fact, many well-known content platforms owned by other internet giants are also turning to develop e-commerce businesses with different focuses. Tencent‘s QQ browser not only allows creators to put shopping links in the comment area, but also builds a recommendation e-commerce platform called “QQ Browser Recommended Products.” Alibaba‘s UC browser has launched its own e-commerce platform that is independent of Taobao called “Songta Shop” in the UC livestreaming section.
