China video app Douyin Group CEO resigns to take new role within ByteDance

TikTok owner ByteDance said on Wednesday that Zhang Nan has resigned as the CEO of Douyin Group, the popular short video platform's sister app in China, while assuming a new role to shepherd ByteDance's video editing app.

Zhang, who also uses the English first name Kelly, posted on her personal social media account on WeChat that she was resigning from the position, in a move confirmed by ByteDance.

Zhang said she would be joining the team at Jianying, a video editing app owned by ByteDance, but she did not reveal her position at the unit. She said she would help grow the product in the age of artificial intelligence.


Jianying is the Chinese app counterpart to the popular editing app CapCut. According to research firm Data.ai in September, CapCut became ByteDance's second app to surpass $100 million in total consumer spending after garnering more than 490 million users.

Zhang, who has worked at ByteDance for 10 years, has been a core leader for the company and helped grow Douyin into the leading short video platform and one of biggest apps in China.

She reported to ByteDance's CEO Liang Rubo in her position as head of Douyin Group.

In addition to the Douyin app, Zhang, who Forbes named as one of the world's most powerful women in 2020, oversaw ByteDance's flagship news aggregator app Toutiao in her former role.

Before joining ByteDance, Zhang founded a popular photo-sharing app called Tuba that was acquired by ByteDance in 2014.