ByteDance-owned TikTok said to lay off hundreds of employees globally as a potential US ban looms

TikTok is cutting hundreds of jobs at its operations and marketing departments, according to two people familiar with the matter, in line with efforts by parent company ByteDance since late 2022 to restructure its businesses. The lay-offs, which were announced internally earlier this week, are expected to affect an undisclosed portion of the roughly 1,000 … Read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which were the most used apps during Lunar New Year? Familiar names like Tencent and ByteDance dominated top 5

The most used apps in China during the Lunar New Year holiday were familiar domestic social media and content platforms that have dominated the market for the past decade, according to government data. Among the apps that used the most cellular data during the nine-day holiday were Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok owned by … Read more

Douyin CEO Kelly Zhang steps down as head of TikTok’s Chinese version to focus on ByteDance video editor CapCut and AI

Kelly Zhang Nan, the most powerful woman in ByteDance, has stepped down as CEO of the Douyin business unit that includes the Chinese version of TikTok, as well as other signature products such as news aggregator Jinri Toutiao. Citing “business development needs and personal preferences”, Zhang will focus on CapCut, a video-editing and graphic design … Read more

China’s internet giants must step up opening their ‘walled gardens’, state media says, ahead of Tencent flagship game’s return to Douyin

“In the future, internet companies need to be more open-minded and inclusive to promote truly win-win cooperation in the industry,” the Securities Times article said. Increased collaboration between China’s major internet companies are expected to not only benefit consumers, but help further expand the industry, according to state media. Photo: Shutterstock While China’s gross domestic … Read more