Jinri Toutiao acquired Musical.ly to create the world's largest short video platform.
on November 10th, Jinri Toutiao formally signed an agreement with Musical.ly, a well-known North American short video social product, to acquire Musical.ly wholly.
original title: done! Jinri Toutiao's wholly-owned acquisition of Musical.ly valued at US $1 billion
on November 10th, Jinri Toutiao formally signed an agreement with Musical.ly, a well-known North American short video social product, to acquire Musical.ly.
it is reported that the market valuation of Musical.ly is close to US $1 billion. After the deal is completed, Douyin, a music short video community owned by Jinri Toutiao, will merge with Musical.ly. The two sides will maintain brand independence and explore more in-depth cooperation in technology, products and other aspects in the future.
this acquisition is a continuation of Jinri Toutiao's globalization strategy, and it is also the second North American short video product included in Jinri Toutiao after Flipagram.
in 2014, Musical.ly officially appeared in the North American market. Since then, it has become popular and once topped the App Store list of the United States. At present, Musical.ly has more than 20 million daily active users worldwide, including more than 6 million active users in North America.
as a short video social product aimed at young users, more than 90% of Musical.ly users are under the age of 21. In the past two years, there have been a large number of young celebrities on Musical.ly, including 16-year-old Baby Ariel, 15-year-old Jacob Sartorius and other super celebrities with tens of millions of fans.
since March this year, Musical.ly has signed cooperation agreements with world-famous media groups such as Disney, MTV, Apple Music, Viacom and NBC Universal to cooperate in music and video content.
Tik Tok is a short video product owned by Jinri Toutiao aimed at young people in first-and second-tier cities in China. 85% of the users are under the age of 24, and the core celebrities and users are basically post-1995 and post-00s.
Douyin's data began to soar in March 2017, with an average of more than 100 million daily video views in May and more than 1 billion in August. Also in August, Jinri Toutiao announced that it would invest hundreds of millions of dollars to help Douyin go international.
Yang Luyu, founder of Musical.ly, said that other companies had expressed strong willingness to acquire before. It was Jinri Toutiao's technological advantages and Douyin's good brand image in China that contributed to the success of the merger.
"the recommendation technology in the headlines will help Musical.ly make further breakthroughs in its business," Yang Luyu said. "at the same time, Douyin and Musical.ly have similar tone, and they have achieved success in the Chinese and North American markets respectively. After mergers and acquisitions, they can better play the role of brand synergy."
Liu Zhen, senior vice president of Jinri Toutiao, said that Douyin and Musical.ly are very popular among young people at home and abroad. In the future, Douyin and Musical.ly will give full play to their technology and content advantages to jointly create the world's largest short video social entertainment platform.
"Jinri Toutiao is committed to using artificial intelligence technology to build an information distribution platform that understands you best in the world," Liu Zhen said. "We hope that technology can serve more people, and Chinese companies should exert more influence in a wider area."
Jinri Toutiao's technology has been successful before. According to people close to Jinri Toutiao, after Toutiao acquired North American short video community Flipagram in February, Jinri Toutiao employees participated in product and technology improvements, and so far, the number of views on the front page of Flipagram's video recommendation has increased 30 times than before the acquisition.
in November last year, Zhang Yiming, founder and CEO of Jinri Toutiao, said at the third World Internet Congress in Wuzhen that "globalization will be one of the core strategies of Jinri Toutiao in 2017."
in more than a year, relying on strong technical strength, Jinri Toutiao has completed its omni-directional overseas layout in Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, South America and other regions by means of self-construction and purchase.
according to public data, Jinri Toutiao invested in Dailyhunt.2016, India's largest news aggregation platform, in October 2016. Jinri Toutiao took control of Indonesia's mobile Internet star project-news recommendation reading platform "BABE" at the end of the year.
in February this year, Jinri Toutiao wholly acquired Flipagram.8, a well-known North American short video community. Jinri Toutiao announced that it would invest hundreds of millions of US dollars to help its music short video App Douyin enter the international market. On November 8th, Cheetah Mobile announced that Jinri Toutiao had acquired its overseas mobile news and information product News Republic. At the same time, Jinri Toutiao's overseas version "Topbuzz" has firmly ranked first in North American Google Play news downloads.
Edit: mary