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TikTok Has Hit The Ticking Clock As Zhang Yiming Steps Down As CEO

Jemima Hunter

June 24, 2021

Thirty-eight-year-old, Zhang Yiming broke the internet when he founded the multi-billion dollar platforms TikTok and Bytedance They now attract over 600 million users worldwide, as the most valuable privately held company in the world.

The entrepreneur had always been curious about technology and listened to his father talk about the latest products developed by his  company since he was a child.  Whilst attending high school Yiming particularly excelled in Chemistry and Computer Science, but was always quite reserved and independent in his nature. However, when the tech wizard attended Nankai University he became rather well- liked by fellow students for his capability to master computing. 

Yiming moved to Beijing in 2005 after graduating and was later asked by a former university pupil to partner up for a job proposition. The management and identity system business start-up unfortunately failed within a few months due  to the state of the market. Although, this attempt failed, Yiming persevered and he joined another co-operation in 2006, that focused on a travel app for China. The successful application was then sold in 2015, to the Matrian group. 

After years of trial and error in several software companies, Yiming joined Microsoft in 2008 but started to recognise that he wasn’t  influencing the internet community as effectively as he wanted to, so decided to begin his initial solo company called 99 Fang; a real estate search engine. After captivating millions of users and becoming the top estate platform in China, Yiming started his second business named ByteDance.

ByteDance was a multinational, internet technology company in 2012.Yiming  launched a meme app that became quite the hit for youths. Unfortunately the app was closed down by the government, but it wasn’t long until Yiming was on to his next entrepreneurial excursion with the original company. 

Four years later, Yiming released TikTok, a video sharing social networking site, where youths can express themselves and  which allowed them  to capture and share with  experiences with their online community. ‘The most important thing is that we are not a news business, we are more like a search business or a social media platform.’ 

A month ago, Yiming decided to step down as CEO of TikTok in order to be more focused on literary and instructional matters. ‘I lack some of the abilities that bag a wonderful supervisor. I’m more attracted to analysing organizational and market principles, and leveraging these theories to extra slit administration work, quite than if truth be told managing folks.’ 

Yiming’s plan is to transition to a new role to focus on a ‘long term strategy’ as he added ‘I will have the field to procure lengthy-term systems, organizational tradition and social accountability, with a more plot standpoint on the firm.’

  • Entrepreneur

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