From the perspective of the business model, TouTiao relies highly on ads. Video ads, however, are naturally short videos. To tell a good story, every second counts. This rule applies not only to ads, but also in the short video sector.

　　In this sense, what TouTiao really attempt to do is consolidate the very foundation of TouTiao via short videos.

　　At the same time, TouTiao has sped up its globalization efforts. This February, TouTiao announced that it had acquired North American mobile video production platform Flipagram and gained the entire product and operation team of Flipagram. According to China Business News, the acquisition only cost TouTiao $ 50 million.

　　Flipagram, the American counterpart of Kuaishou

　　Earlier, Flipagram received a $ 70 million Series B round financing led by Sequoia Capital in July 2015 at a valuation of nearly $300 million.

　　As a matter of fact, Amemv marked Zhang Yiming’s ambition to catch up and even surpass internet giants.

　　After Wang Xing, founder of Renren, Fanfou and Meituan, came up with the idea of “the second half of internet battle”, people began to refer to TouTiao, Meituan & Dianping and Didi Chuxing as “TMD”.

　　TouTiao not only grabbed the business of traditional news portals, but also grabbed part of Baidu’s business by earning over 10 billion yuan through ads business in 2016, as many analysts believed. It seems that TouTiao is indeed getting closer and closer to internet giants.

　　A respondent from Amemv revealed to TMTPost that an internet giant among BAT approached Amemv on matters of acquisition recently, but was refused by Zhang Yiming. “After all, Amemv is nurtured by TouTiao. How can TouTiao bear that?” the respondent explained.

　　In an interview with Finance magazine, Zhang already publicly attacked Baidu. Today, however, it seems that TouTiao has eyed on Tencent, the most highly valued internet company in the Chinese internet world, through its strategic products.

　　Last year, TouTiao APP already attempted to keep up with Tencent News APP, while Tencent also purchased KuaiBao to fight back. After Tencent invested in Kuaishou APP, TouTiao followed suit, nurtured short video APPs including Amemv and Moutain short Video and acquired American UGC-based short video platform Flipagram.

　　“In fact, TouTiao has always identified with the path of Tencent, and a little bit with Huawei”, Zhang said, “Tencent cares a great deal if users are willing to stay inside Tencent’s ecosystem.”

　　Last July, it was rumored that Tencent was to invest in TouTiao. However, Zhang denied the rumor and declared that “he founded TouTiao not to become Tencent’s employee.”

　　In an interview with CCTV program “Dialogue”, Zhang claimed that TouTiao would never take sides among BAT. “It would make more sense to grow big by ourselves. After all, TouTiao has its own ambitions,” he said.

　　“The dominance of BAT should be broken long ago… From the perspective of business model, TouTiao has been a borderless platform since its establishment,” Liu Zhen, former head of UberChina, said after joining TouTiao and publicly declared that it was likely TouTiao could break the dominance of BAT.

　　In this sense, if Toutiao released a “behemoth” game project based on its broad user base one day, it would come as no surprise.

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　　[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Li Chengchengplease note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

　　Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.