TikTok Pledges Support to Over a Thousand Japanese Content Creators

ZHANG YUSHUO

(Yicai Global) Feb. 14 — Chinese short-video sharing app Douyin, known internationally as TikTok, is offering a heap of services to more than a thousand content producers in Japan as it looks to diversify the range of media found on its platform.

The Beijing-based firm behind the app, Bytedance Technology, will offer the producers technical support and internet, television and marketing services, tech news site TMTPost reported.

The move comes as TikTok’s Japanese outfit looks to offer a broader range of content to capture local audiences. More than 60 percent of its videos spanned multiple categories as of the end of last year, according to the company, which lists its top five segments as vlogs, paint and pottery, comic shorts, pets and food.

TikTok landed on the archipelago in summer 2017 and last year beat out messaging app Line, Google Maps and a number of other leading applications in downloads across the country. It led the Apple App Store’s free chart in 2018 and the smartphone giant ranked it as one of the best apps of the year.

Its performance was supported by the 280 themed competitions it has held over the last 12 months, which mostly lured in content producers who create native Japanese music and original sound bites.

Editor: James Boynton