ByteDance to take e-commerce viral

The Future. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is reportedly starting a global e-commerce operation, á la Amazon, which could actually roll out as part of TikTok. While ByteDance could see success in most of the world, American suspicion of TikTok could kneecap the company’s ambitions in the states.

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ByteDance is getting into the boxing business.

• The Chinese tech company is launching an international e-commerce platform to rival Amazon and Alibaba’s AliExpress.
• It’s still to be determined whether the company will exist inside TikTok (which ByteDance owns) or will roll out as a separate app.
• It will most likely focus on selling products that are made in China to consumers around the world.

ByteDance is already hiring for the platform, and this nugget of information is buried in the job postings: “TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better e-commerce experience to our users.”

Raiding the Amazon
While Amazon and Alibaba may seem like immovable behemoths in the e-commerce industry, ByteDance senses an opportunity to make a dent in the market. Amazon recently removed thousands of third-party sellers in China from its platform because they violated rules pertaining to things like posting fake reviews. ByteDance is probably hoping to scoop up these sellers.

Several Chinese companies are reportedly already using TikTok to sell products around the globe, even though the app technically isn’t available in China. Instead of cracking down on this practice, Beijing is apparently supportive of the “cross-border” online sales. That’ll prove vital to ByteDance’s success in the space.