Douyin to give tech giants a run for their money

Upstart short-video app Douyin is going viral.

Not only have its global users topped 500 million this month, it's also set to challenge China's biggest tech companies, by diverting user attention from online chatting and shopping to a wide array of 15-second videos.

Figures showed how Douyin is rewriting the rules of the mobile internet. The short music-video app was the most downloaded on Apple's iOS platform in China in the first three months of this year, according to researcher QuestMobile.