Toutiao operator ByteDance sees the future in short videos; wants content creators to make money
Consumers of short videos are expected to jump 58.2pc in China this year
Beijing ByteDance Technology, the operator of China’s largest news aggregator Toutiao, is investing 2 billion yuan (US$302.77 million) to subsidise creators of online short videos as it expects the format to soon dominate mobile screens of China’s 700 million smartphone users.
Zhang Yiming, founder and chief executive of ByteDance, announced the investment in Beijing on Saturday to help commercialise short videos.
He said it would enable “all content creators to make money and help top creators to make big money”.
The investment would be used to reward creators of high-quality video on Xigua Video, one of the major short-video platforms operated by ByteDance, said Zhang.
Apart from the investment, ByteDance said it would offer a string of new services to support content creators to make money, including a feature to allow users to shop while watching video online.
The move to use heavy investment to court content creators was part of ByteDance’s latest strategy to “go all in” as Zhang sees short-form video – less than 20 minutes in length – as the main format in which information would be presented and consumed in the future.