Douyin Adjusts Organization Scheme as MAUs Grow Slowly in 2021
Chinese media outlet 36Kr reported on Monday that the domestic version of TikTok, Douyin, has recently restructured its organization scheme. Zhi Ying, the head of markets, now takes over the operation department while Han Shangyou, the head of live-streaming, is now in charge of the local life business.
Previously, Seven was responsible for the products, operations and local life business of Douyin. After the adjustment, Yoyo, the current head of operations, reported to Zhi Ying, and Li Ran, the head of local life, reported to Han Shangyou. Seven now only manages products.
This is also the first time that Douyin has adjusted its organizational structure since Seven took office in July last year. Several people familiar with the matter told 36Kr that the adjustment is because executives are dissatisfied with the work performance of Douyin, as reflected in the progress of the platform and local life business.
36Kr also learned from several independent sources that as of September this year, Douyin’s DAUs grew to about 640 million, with 500 million users on the Douyin app and about 140 million on the Douyin Jisu version. Since Douyin announced it had amassed over 600 million DAUs in June last yea, the Douyin app has not seen a significant increase in DAUs. The limited growth is mainly driven by social interaction and live-streaming. At present, the growth of Douyin is mainly driven by the Douyin Jisu version. In the first half of this year, the DAUs of Douyin Jisu version was up by about 8%.
Local life is one of the key businesses that Douyin has been engaged in over the past year, but it hasn’t yet yielded remarkable achievements. Over the past year, Seven managed the local life business of ByteDance, and pushed this business jointly with ByteDance’s commercialization team. Douyin team worked on products and operations, and the commercialization team worked on promoting sales.
Reports by many press outlets suggest that since the end of 2020, ByteDance has made a series of adjustments to the organizational structure and business scope of the commercialization team. For example, the most profitable e-commerce business of Wenzhou local direct sales center was eliminated and handed over to the mass consumption business line. As a result, Wenzhou center performed poorly and was the first to be shut down and its workers laid off. This year, local direct sales center is responsible for cultivating local life business and promoting advertising revenue from local small and medium-sized merchants.
