On November 2, Liang Rubo, who officially took over as the CEO of ByteDance, released an email from all staff announcing the organizational adjustment and the implementation of business line BU (Business
Unit, business unit), established six business sectors-Douyin, Dali Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Chaoxi Guangnian and TikTok. The heads of relevant business sectors all report to Liang Rubo. Liang Rubo is also officially responsible for the overall development of the company. Behind the adjustment of the organizational structure, the pressure of hard financial data such as business development, revenue growth, and input-output ratio has gradually emerged.
Layoffs and adjustments
Previously, after BYTE planned to sell its securities business in September this year, it was reported thateducateThe layoffs of the division and the game division. In response to the group layoffs in the middle of this year, a person from ByteDance responded to a reporter from China Business News: Ohayoo (a casual game owned by ByteDance) has 350 full-time employees. The staff adjustment involves 79 people, including 30 school enrollment. Bytedance said that the company will compensate resigned employees according to the “N + 1” standard, and it is also prioritizing school enrollment and transfer.
According to a reporter from China Business News from the cross-source, apart from the game business department, ByteDance has laid off employees in other business departments, including the game business department restricted by the game version number, and the education department involves teaching auxiliary middle stage and marketing middle stage. Wait, compensation N+2. Regarding the claim that the proportion of layoffs reached 10%, a reporter from China Business News asked ByteDance for verification. As of press time, no response has been received.
In June of this year, Liang Rubo disclosed for the first time the company’s financial situation in 2020 and the latest business data. The total number of employees of the group in 2020 has exceeded 110,000.
After the turmoil, there is an urgent need for stability at the organizational level. The open letter of organizational structure adjustment shows that the latest organizational adjustment of Byte is in accordance with the principle of “closely coordinated businesses and teams merge into business segments, and universal China and Taiwan are developed into enterprise service businesses.” , Designed to cope with the challenges of business becoming more complex and team size growing.
In May of this year, Zhang Yiming stated in an internal letter that he and Liang Rubo will complete the transition of ByteDance CEO duties before the end of 2021. This organizational adjustment means that the handover has been completed as scheduled.
After the adjustment, ByteDance merged Toutiao, Watermelon Video, Search, Encyclopedia, and domestic vertical service businesses into Douyin. This sector is responsible for the overall development of domestic information and service businesses.
During the same period, some functions of the company’s employee development department were transformed into the direction of vocational education and merged into the vigorous education sector. This section is committed to establishing a life-long education service system, covering areas such as smart learning, adult education, smart hardware, and campus cooperation. Feishu, EE (Enterprise Efficiency Department), and EA (Enterprise Application Department) are merged into Feishu, focusing on providing enterprise collaboration and management services.
In addition, the Volcano Engine sector focuses on building an enterprise-level technical service cloud platform. Chaoxi Lightyear is responsible for game development and distribution. The TikTok sector is responsible for the TikTok platform business and supports the development of extended businesses such as overseas e-commerce. It is worth noting that TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi no longer serves as ByteDance’s CFO, and the company’s finance department turned to Liang Rubo to report.
Growth pressure forces business adjustments
Compared with the layoffs in education and gaming departments, the merger of Watermelon Video and Toutiao and other businesses into Douyin is a point that deserves more attention. Not long ago, Ren Lifeng, president of Watermelon Video, announced that Watermelon Video will work with Volcano Engine to conduct over 100 classic animations in the coming year.4Krepair.
Going back to when Douyin was first established, the direct leader of the 15-person founding team was still Ren Lifeng. Afterwards, after structural adjustments, Ren Lifeng turned to Zhu Jun, the head of Musical.ly, to report, and Zhu Jun reported to Douyin CEO Zhang Nan.
On March 12, 2020, Zhang Yiming released an internal email announcing the company’s organizational upgrade. Douyin CEO Zhang Nan will serve as the CEO of ByteDance (China) as the chief executive of China’s business; Zhang Lidong will serve as the chairman of ByteDance (China) as the chief executive of China’s functions, and will fully coordinate the company’s operations. This time Liang Rubo officially took over as the CEO of Bytedance, which also means that Liang Rubo, Zhang Lidong, and Zhang Nan’s “troika” power structure has been formally established.
The adjustments at the executive level and the integration of Watermelon Video and Toutiao into Douyin means that Douyin has officially become the core growth engine of the Bytedance Group. According to a reporter from China Business News, although Ren Lifeng is the president of Watermelon Video, he is actually only responsible for purchasing and operation. The more core business is handled by the vice president of Douyin, Zhi Ying. The budget and resource authority of Watermelon Video have also been assigned to Douyin early. under.
The gradual marginalization of Watermelon Video and Ren Lifeng is based on the low input-output ratio of long-term investment but little return. In October last year, Ren Lifeng announced that Watermelon Video would spend at least 2 billion yuan in subsidies in the next year to make efforts on the video track. “The video industry in China has developed very fast in the past year.Station Bwell-done. Watermelon Video will increase investment in production tools, original flow matching, and financial support in the future. “Ren Lifeng said at the time, but one year later, Watermelon Video still hasn’t achieved the phenomenon of breaking the circle similar to Station B, and the time window given to Watermelon by the byte that values the efficiency ratio is also nearing end.
Today’s Toutiao traffic dividend has also entered a bottleneck period, and the merger into Douyin is a foregone conclusion. According to Analysys Qianfan’s data, in September this year, Douyin had approximately 660 million monthly active users, a decline from the 700 million MAU in August; as of October 28, the daily active users of Douyin’s main website were approximately 370 million. In January this year, Douyin announced its 2020 data report. As of August 2020, Douyin’s daily active users, including Douyin Volcano, exceeded 600 million.
On the one hand, BYTE, which pays attention to the input-output ratio, is adjusting its core business to stop losses, and on the other hand, it focuses on new businesses such as social networking and local life. However, the peaking of mobile Internet traffic dividends is a challenge for the entire industry, and byte beating cannot be achieved. Spared.