TikTok’s Chinese version gets WeChat-style friend-finding function in social networking push, challenging Tencent

  • ByteDance’s Douyin now lets users shake their phones to find users nearby, a feature that helped rival Tencent grow WeChat into China’s most-used super app
  • The Beijing-based company has been looking for ways to expand the domestic version of TikTok beyond short videos to become a social and lifestyle platform

A man stands near a giant sign of ByteDance’s app Douyin during China Fashion Week in Beijing on March 31. Photo: Reuters

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok developed by Beijing-based ByteDance, launched a location-based social feature on Monday that allows users to find people nearby by shaking their phones, replicating a feature almost identical to one that has long existed in Tencent Holdings’ WeChat in a move widely seen as a challenge to the latter’s dominance in social networking.

The feature called dou yi dou, which roughly translates as “shake it”, allows users to shake their phones and see others doing the same nearby, then add each other to their friends lists. It works similarly to WeChat’s yao yi yao, which helped popularise the super app in its early days by making it easy to add new contacts.

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