TikTok owner ByteDance shuts down overseas news aggregator TopBuzz

BEIJING/SHANGHAI: ByteDance, proprietor of the worldwide hit short-video app TikTok, has shut down its artificial-intelligence-based information aggregator TopBuzz, one of many firm’s earliest merchandise aimed on the world stage.

“We’re pleased with the work that we completed with TopBuzz, however (we) have decided that different areas of the enterprise needs to be our precedence going ahead,” ByteDance mentioned in an announcement despatched to Reuters on Friday.

The closure of TopBuzz underlines how ByteDance’s strikes into worldwide markets haven’t been completely clean despite TikTok’s success.

Launched in 2015, TopBuzz was the abroad equal of Chinese information aggregator Jinri Toutiao, that means “Today’s Headlines”, which was considered one of Beijing-based ByteDance’s first successes. The app recommends personalised information articles to customers with completely different pursuits based mostly on its AI-driven algorithms.

However, TopBuzz was not as in style because the later TikTok app.

TopBuzz’s downloads declined to 1.2 million within the first half of 2019 from 7 million in all of 2018 on the App Store and Google Play mixed, in response to researcher Sensor Tower. TikTok had 345.2 million downloads within the first half of 2019.

TopBuzz started shrinking its operations final yr, in response to two sources conversant in the matter. The app used to have operations in a number of languages together with Spanish and Portuguese, one of many sources mentioned. But now its web site solely exhibits English and Japanese variations.

ByteDance is at present below a US nationwide safety inquiry into TikTok’s dealing with of person information, and in addition going through tightened scrutiny from regulators around the globe.

TopBuzz’s tepid efficiency has not stopped Chinese entrepreneurs from beginning world information apps.

News Break, based by Yahoo alumnus Zheng Zhaohui in 2015 and backed by Chinese traders, was ranked because the No. 1 information and journal app on Google Play within the U.S. by utilization over the previous 28 days, adopted by Twitter and Reddit, in response to app efficiency tracker ComparableWeb.

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