Douyin, the Chinese version of short video app TikTok, hit 600 million daily active users in August 2020, an executive with parent company ByteDance said on Tuesday i.e.15th September, a 50% jump since the start of the year.
Users in China are not able to access the TikTok app, which is wildly popular with teenagers worldwide and the subject of a fierce rift between Beijing and Washington over security concerns, but can use Douyin, which is almost similar in design.
In comparison, China’s messaging app WeChat, which is owned by Tencent Holdings, said it had over 1 billion users using the app everyday in 2018. China had 1.6 billion monthly active mobile internet users as of May 2020, according to market researcher QuestMobile.
ByteDance is taking into account listing its China business in Hong Kong or Shanghai, among escalating tensions between world’s two largest economies, Reuters has reported. That listing plan was initiated after U.S. regulators started to review ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly 2019.
The bulk of ByteDance’s revenue is still generated in China, sources have told Reuters, mainly from ad income on Douyin and its Chinese news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.
