Zhu Wenjia, CEO of ByteDance's news aggregator app Toutiao, is said to be moving to TikTok to take charge of product technology and other business lines. At present, Zhu’s job adjustment and the appointment have not been officially announced.
Zhu is adjusting from a business to a technical position due to personal development and will be supporting TikTok's technical work at the Singapore R&D center, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by Tech Planet.
It is worth noting that Zhu recently liked short videos by several TikTok algorithms and product employees in TikTok, and the frequency of his interactions with TikTok employees has increased significantly.
Zhu was the algorithm engineer of Toutiao, and has been highly valued by ByteDance's recommendation algorithm leader Yang Zhenyuan, " he is the Top3 candidate of algorithm technology in Toutiao".
In June 2019, Zhu was promoted to the head of Toutiao, reporting to Chen Lin, the then CEO of Toutiao. In September 2019, Zhu became the CEO of Toutiao.
Zhu, who worked in the search department of Baidu, also believes in the importance of content and search, that content is the root of search, and that the content ecology should be large and of good enough quality to successfully feed search.
After Zhu took over Toutiao, Toutiao App achieved a DAU of over 100 million around the Spring Festival in 2020, significant growth of users in the short term. Before that, the user growth trend of Toutiao had tended to stagnate.
Sensor Tower app store’s intelligence data shows that in January 2021 Douyin and TikTok earned nearly $128 million in the global App Store and Google Play, 3.8 times more than that of January last year, reigning as the global mobile app (non-game) revenue leader once again.
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