Douyin

ByteDance details dozens of internal misconduct cases from bribery and data leaks to using company funds for personal expenses

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ByteDance, owner of hit short-video app TikTok and its Chinese sibling Douyin, has internally disclosed 61 misconduct cases involving employees who were fired or charged by authorities for accepting bribes, leaking data and claiming expenses inappropriately, among other wrongdoings. Four employees were detained or released on bail, including former Douyin worker Lu Yang, who accepted … Read more

Chinese food-delivery giant Meituan to debut in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh as international expansion quickens

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The company’s foray into Riyadh will pit Meituan against local rivals including Jahez International Co, Delivery Hero’s Talabat and HungerStation and Uber Technologies-backed Careem. The move comes as Saudi Arabia, already the region’s biggest economy, devises plans to invest trillions of dollars to become a tourism and commercial hub. The skyline of Riyadh, the capital … Read more

TikTok owner ByteDance earns praise from Chinese social media for rejecting US sell-or-ban ultimatum

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Beijing-based ByteDance late on Thursday rejected a report by US digital publication The Information, which said that it was “exploring scenarios” to sell a majority stake in TikTok’s US operations to firms outside the technology industry and without the algorithm that powers the platform. In a statement posted on its Jinri Toutiao news platform, ByteDance … Read more

Chinese Students Are Attending ‘TikTok School’ To Learn How To Sell Clothes Abroad

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At an e-commerce school, Chinese students practice selling clothes to overseas TikTok users. To understand their target audience, they record themselves on camera wearing hijabs and abaya gowns over casual clothing. It’s the final day of a two-week course on selling products abroad via the short video app TikTok. Despite being blocked in China, this … Read more

US sell-or-ban law against TikTok stirs unease in China as Beijing, social media giant ByteDance stay mum on next moves

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An article published by the Beijing Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Beijing Municipal Committee, said the measure against TikTok is tantamount to a “robbery” that would “completely destroy American national credibility, which is already flawed”. United States President Joe Biden speaks after signing into law the foreign aid bill and a … Read more

Kuaishou’s top e-commerce influencer accuses platform of unfair treatment in rare public spat

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The top influencer on Kuaishou Technology, China’s No 2 short video platform, has complained about being unfairly treated in a rare open spat between a live streaming star and a major internet platform. Xin Youzhi, widely known as Xinba, or The Lion King’s Simba in English, has stopped updating his social media since Saturday, when … Read more

ByteDance profit jumps 60% to US$40 billion, taking TikTok’s owner past arch-rival Tencent

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ByteDance’s profit surged roughly 60 per cent in 2023, outpacing the growth of online peers Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding, in a sign of the TikTok owner’s resilience in the face of an economic downturn. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation jumped to more than US$40 billion from about US$25 billion in 2022, … Read more

TikTok owner ByteDance denies report of profit surge in 2023, prepares to launch Instagram rival

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ByteDance, the owner of short video app TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, has denied a news report saying the company’s profits jumped 60 per cent last year, as it plans two new apps – one to rival Instagram and another targeting European users – amid political headwinds against TikTok in the United States. Bloomberg … Read more

Alibaba connects Taobao and 1688 to tap new users as fierce e-commerce competition ratchets higher

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Alibaba Group Holding is integrating the services of its online wholesale marketplace 1688 with its flagship consumer shopping platform Taobao, as the e-commerce giant continues to consolidate assets amid internal restructuring and rising competition. Taobao has recently featured three online stores under the 1688 name as it pushes to win over new users, according to … Read more

TikTok owner ByteDance accelerates generative AI efforts with increased talent acquisition, release of new tools

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Beijing-based ByteDance’s website listed more than 320 GenAI-related job openings as of Tuesday, up from 307 vacancies posted a month earlier, according to a search conducted by the South China Morning Post. A specific search for jobs in the development of large language models (LLMs) – the technology used to train ChatGPT and similar GenAI … Read more