New social tool tipped to compete with WeChat

Bytedance, which owns Toutiao and Douyin (Tik Tok), released a new social platform tool called Duoshan in Beijing today, which is expected to compete with Tencent’s WeChat.

Duoshan has “close and multilayer links” with features of Douyin, which has 250 million daily active users as of January, said Zhang Nan, Douyin’s president. 

“It is the year of both recording and sharing in 2019,” said Zhang, referring to the new tool combining short videos and social features.

Duoshan is now available for Android users and will soon be available for Apple’s iOS users.

Bytedance released the new social tool to expand business, and also because Douyin links are blocked in the WeChat platform.

Tencent also issued a big update of WeChat recently with improved video sharing functions, which was seen to fight against Douyin.

The new releases represented the competition between two dot-com giants, Tencent and Bytedance, which both have several hundred million active users. They both want to catch the attention and time of users, which can be turned into traffic and money. 

In January, Douyin’s daily active user base reached 250 million, compared with 30 million a year ago, according to Zhang.