The 32-year-old Han will be responsible for ‘coordinating the management of Douyin, (its) life service business line and live streaming business’. Compared with his predecessors, Han is seen as a younger face who parent company ByteDance can rely on to inject fresh ideas. — SCMP
Short video platform Douyin, the Chinese sibling to ByteDance-owned TikTok, has appointed 32-year-old Han Shangyou as its business leader, making him the youngest executive in charge of the hugely popular app.
Several Douyin managers, including Wu Xiaodan, in charge of user growth, and Zhi Ying who oversees content and product, now report to Han, according to a notice on its internal human resources system seen by the South China Morning Post.
Han, who previously managed Douyin’s local services and its open developer platform, directly reports to Kelly Zhang Nan, the most powerful woman in ByteDance who heads the Douyin business unit that includes the video app as well as other signature products like news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.
A representative from the Douyin business unit said that Han would now be responsible for “coordinating the management of Douyin, [its] life service business line and live streaming business”.
Han, who graduated from the prestigious Nanjing University in 2013, joined ByteDance in 2016, where he worked for short video platform Huoshan, now rebranded to support Douyin. He later moved to oversee the live streaming team at the video app.
Han is a “straight shooter” who will challenge colleagues in front of others, according to an employee who has been in meetings with him.
Compared with his predecessors, Han is seen as a younger face who ByteDance could rely on to inject fresh ideas. Before Han, Douyin was overseen by Zhang, who is believed to be in her late 30s or early 40s, as there is no public information about her year of birth.
The video platform’s earlier head was 40-year-old Alex Zhu, who founded Musical.ly a few years earlier before selling it to ByteDance in 2017, which merged the app into TikTok. Before Zhu, Douyin was managed by Ren Lifeng, a 35-year-old ByteDance veteran who is now with its virtual reality unit Pico.
Douyin is one of ByteDance’s most successful products, contributing nearly 60 per cent of the company’s advertising revenue, according to a 2020 report by Reuters.
However, Douyin has not updated its user base numbers since August 2020, when it announced that its number of daily active users surpassed 600 million.
During an internal meeting on Wednesday, ByteDance chief executive Liang Rubo said the company needs to “get fit”, a term he has repeatedly used this year to describe the need to streamline operations and improve efficiency.
ByteDance, one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, still has its public listing plans on hold.
Separately, Beijing’s enhanced regulations on algorithms and privacy restrict Douyin’s powerful recommendation engine from becoming more addictive.
The company’s net loss widened by 87% to US$84.9bil last year, but it achieved an operating profit in the first quarter of 2022, according to The Wall Street Journal.
ByteDance has been diversifying its revenue channels, including expanding Douyin beyond just an entertainment platform. The app also works as an online shopping site, as well as a resource to help users find the best restaurants and hotels, a business known as “local services” and currently dominated by Meituan.
Earlier this month, Douyin partnered with some of China’s major delivery service providers, including JD.com’s Dada Nexus and SF Express’ SFTC, giving it access to millions of couriers and the ability to make “one-hour deliveries” to customers who order meals online.
The move follows the group buying service Douyin launched in early 2021, where merchants from the restaurant, hotel and travel industry were invited to use the platform for live streaming and video promotions.
Douyin’s local life service business had already reached its annual target in October, and gross merchandise volume reached a record 10bil yuan (US$1.4 billion), according to Chinese media 36Kr. – South China Morning Post
