I can't wait. Over the weekend, the news of bytexing's name change spread widely: on May 8, according to media reports, bytexing Tiao (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. was renamed Tiktok group (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. - this is the first time that the company has changed its name since its incorporation in 2012; On May 7, the national enterprise credit information publicity system showed that bytewo Co., Ltd. was renamed Tiktok Co., Ltd., and Beijing bytewo Technology Co., Ltd. was also renamed Tiktok Information Service Co., Ltd.
Source: screenshot of the official website of the Hong Kong registry
Since then, the discussion of "Tiktok group may be listed in Hong Kong" has swept the headlines of major media again.
Coincidentally, on April 25, the chief financial officer (CFO) of byte beat had a new successor after five months of vacancy - Julie Gao, senior partner of Shida international law firm, will join byte beat as CFO. In this regard, Hu olfactory analyzed in the article "byte trying to" take a thrilling leap ". He believes that the famous law firm leader on Wall Street is not only familiar with the IPO process rules in the United States, Hong Kong, China and other places, but also has rich practical experience in the IPO of zhonggai shares, which is highly accurate for the" mission "of byte beating or paving the way for IPO.
Now, it seems that from the appointment of the new CFO to the renaming of bytexing, the listing plan of Tiktok group has slowly begun.
Why did the byte system change its name
Ten year old byte beating was once regarded as an "app factory" by the outside world, but Tiktok is undoubtedly the most familiar and most frequently used by domestic users.
As early as last November, when byte beat announced that the organizational structure adjustment intended to strengthen the strategic position of Tiktok in the whole group, some people in the industry believed that "the biggest part of the organizational structure adjustment led by liangrubo is that today's headlines, watermelon video, headlines Encyclopedia (the previous Interactive Encyclopedia) and headlines search and other well-known products are classified into the 'Tiktok' business line."
First of all, the combination of Tiktok + today's headlines + watermelon + encyclopedia + search is an adjustment that simplifies complexity and gives priority to organizational effectiveness. In terms of incubation time, "watermelon video" and "Tiktok" started almost at the same time. Even in the early stage, the Group paid more attention to watermelon than Tiktok. As a result, Tiktok won the first place with 640million daus. According to Aurora big data, the monthly average dau of watermelon video fell from 43million to 34million during March 2020 to March 2021, and its internal position will naturally be weakened; As for today's headlines, although it is a fortune making business with beating bytes, the information flow is obviously not the trend in the future, and now the ceiling can be seen after years of development.
Zhouxiaojun (a pseudonym), an Internet analyst at a securities firm in Shanghai, told the China Securities Journal that after the adjustment, bytek has become more focused on resources. "The core is that all resources are directed to departments more recognized by the company, and no longer attack everywhere. The resource investment of Tiktok, tiktok and Feishu is increasing, and the growth is weak."
Moreover, there is also a huge gap in the commercial liquidity of the three. According to Bloomberg news, among the 183.1 billion yuan of advertising revenue in 2020, Tiktok contributed nearly 60% of the total advertising revenue, today's headlines contributed about 20%, and watermelon video accounted for less than 3%.
Secondly, after incorporating information, Chinese video, search and encyclopedia into Tiktok, the combination of Tiktok + today's headlines + watermelon + encyclopedia + search can make up for Tiktok's lack of content form richness; On the other hand, the market data shows that the user coincidence of watermelon video and Tiktok is only 11.6%. After the platform ecology is opened up, it may generate new increment through internal integration, and continue to maintain the rapid growth of Tiktok in user traffic, usage scenarios and reuse levels; And based on the behavior of different app users, establish a more three-dimensional user portrait and launch more accurate information flow (content + advertising + e-commerce).
In this regard, the author of tiger sniff's "commercialization view" pointed out that byte beating reproduces the mainstream commercialization evolution path of Internet giants, that is, after gathering large-scale traffic, first realize the traffic, and then tap the technology spillover value (value-added forms such as big data, artificial intelligence and Cloud Computing). He further pointed out that the byte beating advertising resources are upgrading and evolving in two directions:
Today's headlines and Tiktok belong to the extensive traffic products made in the early stage of byte beating; Chedi, zhuxiaobang and xingfuli are all products of vertical flow expansion in the middle and later stage. Their value is to undertake generalized flow and bring flow appreciation with the help of vertical products, so as to extend more realization scenarios.
Overseas traffic resources are being commercialized rapidly, strongly boosting the growth of international revenue. In 2021, overseas promotion and marketing resources were officially added to a large number of engines, and overseas product resources (tiktok, buzzvideo, topbuzz) were opened to meet the overseas promotion needs of advertisers.
Finally, the group implements business unit (business unit), which shows that it is gradually transforming from the organizational structure system divided according to functions in the past to the division structure. Before the adjustment, the company gradually formed an organizational system of "big, middle and small front desk" in the development process, rather than establishing a bu structure of large business groups according to products, services, business clusters or profit centers like Alibaba and Tencent.
It is undeniable that the organization system of byte beating has demonstrated its strong combat capability in the past few years. Under the strategy of "rapid march, rapid trial and error and rapid adjustment", byte beating has extended its tentacles to enterprise services, entertainment media, artificial intelligence, and other industries through investment in more than 200 projects (more than 400 foreign investment companies, including music.ly, Mucong game, Pico and other star companies) Insurance brokerage, digital technology, education and training, medical services, real estate services, etc.
Focus on specific business. According to media reports, when byte beating realizes a product function, it takes only one week from preparing to go online to resuming the disk, and the mobility advantage of "small front desk" is fully amplified; As for the "big middle platform", it is more like an operation center supported by technology, user operation and commercialization, so as to ensure the collaborative efficiency and resource allocation of various business segments to the greatest extent.
Dismantling these 200 investment projects is not difficult to find that byte jump's investment demands are mostly based on the coordination and supplement of business and technology, and quickly graft external resources into its own business system to achieve data anti transcendence in the "arms race" of the subdivision track in the way of Blitzkrieg. This is also one of the logic that byte system always "worked hard to achieve miracles" on the product side in the past.
However, when the number of employees in this huge empire expands to more than 100000, the limitations of this organizational system are also exposed. For example, in its latest article, Shenwang analyzed that "when a growing enterprise focuses on a single or similar track, putting the functional parts that can be used by each business into the public 'big and medium platform' can indeed improve efficiency, establish a rapid iterative mechanism, and help the incubation and growth of innovative business; when the multi business platform enters a stable period, the growth slows down, and the big and medium platform becomes a drag on organizational efficiency."
According to latepost, in 2020, the average annual income of each employee of byte jump is up. Compared with the per capita contribution income of other technology giants when they reach the scale of 100000 people, byte jump is basically at the bottom, and its per capita output is declining for three consecutive years.
In addition, after stepping into local life and education one after another, the market feedback has always been unsatisfactory, and after more than a year of attempts, it has not met expectations; As for Zhang Yiming's game business, which is willing to "krypton gold", it also lacks dazzling achievements. From this, the news of education, commercialization and layoffs of game teams came out in the second half of 2021.
To sum up, byte beating incorporates watermelon video, today's headlines and various vertical service applications into Tiktok, aiming to strengthen the user's mind of Tiktok for byte beating "super application", so that it is no longer just an app, but the largest business unit of byte, and can fully allocate resources, especially when breaking down business revenue goals.
So it seems that the byte beating renaming Tiktok group has also become a matter of course. Even in 2020, it was reported that byte beat was studying the separation of Tiktok and going public in Hong Kong, and negotiating with investment banks such as Goldman Sachs on listing arrangements; Then, on March 24, 2021, Xiaomi's former CFO Zhou took office as byte beat CFO, setting off another wave of discussion on byte listing.
Now, in just one month, byte beat first appointed a new CFO to find a "handrail" for Tiktok group to go public in Hong Kong, then expanded Tiktok's advantages through brand unification, internal traffic and performance interoperability, and continued to strengthen its mind as a "super application" of byte beat, which undoubtedly indicates that the IPO process of Tiktok is approaching.
However, pan Helin, CO director and researcher of the Research Center for digital economy and financial innovation of the International United Business School of Zhejiang University, believes that if Tiktok chooses to start listing now, it may not be the best time. He further pointed out, "Tiktok is undoubtedly a successful application, but liquidity is a challenge for IPO at this stage. For Tiktok, it may wait for the market to seek listing in a period of stable valuation. If it is forced to be listed at present, it is difficult to be optimistic about the valuation of Tiktok at this stage."
Zhang Yiming is not "retiring"
In May last year, Zhang Yiming announced his resignation as CEO of byte beat, and Liang Rubo, co-founder of byte beat, became the successor.
At the same time, tianyancha showed that Zhang Yiming withdrew from the key personnel of Tianjin byte Beating Technology Co., Ltd. and no longer served as an executive director; Zhang Yiming also withdrew from the shareholders of Tibet source code equity investment partnership (limited partnership) and Tibet source Shang equity investment partnership (limited partnership), and no longer served as the legal representative of Beijing youzhuju Network Technology Co., Ltd. According to latepost, Zhang Yiming has officially resigned from the board of directors and handed over his seat to Liang Rubo.
As early as 2016, Zhang Yiming publicly expressed his views on the management of large companies. "With the growth of the company, the business is becoming more and more complex. While expanding the scale of personnel, the talent team will inevitably be diluted."
In this regard, Zhang Yizhen (senior media person, pseudonym) told Hu olfactory that when we were still discussing how to become an app explosive factory a few years ago, Zhang Yiming was already thinking about organizing iteration. "Regardless of media reports or market attention, the company lags behind -- when we simply discuss the content level, Zhang Yiming spread products to all competition channels; when we pay attention to its product matrix, he is considering how to manage this organization with more than 100000 people, even earlier (Zhang Yiming's microblog has been thinking about organization management since 2011)."
He further added that before tiktok faced the regulatory storm, Zhang Yiming internally proposed to turn "organization management" into the next construction focus around the eighth anniversary of the company. "Compared with specific business, he began to pay more attention to the company's strategy and corporate culture construction."
The problem is that the rising speed of the company is far faster than people expected. After just nine years of brutal growth, the number of employees of the company established in 2012 has rapidly reached 110000. Looking at such a large company at home and abroad, there are only a few. How to manage this huge organization undoubtedly poses a new challenge to the helm of the company and a great test of the helm's cognition.
Liang Rubo and Zhang Yiming met at the University. After that, they have been entrepreneurial partners (co founders) in the Jiujiu housing project in 2009 and the byte beating project in 2012. When Liang Rubo was in charge of product R & D, he led many important products and businesses, including today's headlines, headlines, advertising system and user growth system.
In particular, since 2020, Liang Rubo has been in charge of the group's human resources and management. It is around this time that the number of employees in the world has increased from 60000 to 110000, becoming the existence of China's Internet employees second only to Huawei (about 194000 in 2020). From this perspective, Liang Rubo may be more suitable for the next development than Zhang Yiming.
However, even if Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO of byte beating, he still serves as the legal representative and senior manager of several byte companies, including Beijing byte beating Network Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing zitiao Network Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Shibei Technology Co., Ltd. and Tianjin byte beating Management Consulting Co., Ltd., while most companies with Liang Rubo as legal person are indirectly or directly wholly-owned by byte beating Co., Ltd.
Therefore, it is inevitable that some people speculate that Zhang Yiming, as the actual controller of hundreds of companies behind the Empire, is in a state of "retreat without rest".
For example, on January 21, when the news that "Nick tran, global marketing director of tiktok, was dismissed for planning false marketing" spread on the Internet, Hu sniff learned from the exclusive report of pandaily that Nick tran's dismissal was related to the "tiktok kitchen" series of marketing activities launched at the end of December 2021 - Zhang Yiming even said internally, "These activities not only become negative and joke news, hurt the brand, but also bring serious damage to the business." Soon afterwards, the news of Nick tran's dismissal was revealed by the media.
It can be seen that even though Zhang Yiming withdrew from the board of directors of byte beat in 2021 and handed over the post of CEO of byte beat to Liang Rubo, his will still plays a vital role in the development process of byte beat - this is undoubtedly a misunderstanding that regulators and the whole company's strategy do not want to see and are eager to clarify.
Screenshot of Hong Kong company online search center. Source: Beijing News
According to the Beijing News, Tiktok group (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. has three directors, namely liangrubo, Mo Zhaoqi and Zhang Peng, CEO of the company. The company is a private limited liability company and does not have the name of Zhang Yiming. On the above search website, Liang Rubo's appointment date is July 23, 2021, and he is registered with a Chinese passport.
According to the data of tianyancha, Liang Rubo has more than ten byte companies, including Beijing Weibo Vision Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing optical cone Technology Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Yingmai Culture Communication Co., Ltd., all of which have Liang Rubo as the legal representative and executive director.
In addition, Liang Rubo also has historical employment information in more than ten byte companies, including Beijing Feishu Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Wenxing Online Technology Co., Ltd. and Chengdu buyihu Technology Co., Ltd., most of which are legal representatives.
These information disclosures at least show that the company is completing the transfer of rights from "Zhang Yiming era" to "Liang Rubo era".