Toutiao buying Musical.ly for $1b
China's top news aggregator service Jinri Toutiao has purchased Musical.ly, the Shanghai-based video-sharing platform popular with young people, for about $1 billion to expand its global reach and take a bigger slice of what could become a multi-billion dollar industry.
The deal has been funded by Bytedance, the company behind Toutiao, and follows its successful previous acquisitions like US video site Flipagram and Indian news distributor Dailyhunt. The Beijing-based tech startup has also speeded up its adoption of algorithms in media products that are popular overseas, experts said.
The latest acquisition would allow Toutiao to have access to Musical.ly's 20 million global users, and create content that resonates with local flavor, according to Bytedance's senior vice-president Liu Zhen.
