[tianshuo]

I want to share a behind the scenes story in Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which relates directly to the subject of this article. Douyin decided to test out its own e-commerce platform, in an alternative to handing over its users to prominent retailers like Taobao and JD.com. They planned to test the water with one category at a time, starting with books.

Douyin worked with major publishers to offer their products on their e-commerce platform. The day they began selling books on their own platform, Taobao's book sales immediately plummeted by half. To everyone's surprise, users were reading and buying more books thanks to Douyin.

The story ends with Jack Ma, the founder of Taobao, arriving at Bytedance HQ to strike a deal on further collaboration between Douyin and Taobao.