Matthew Brennan from China Channel joined us in a fascinating conversation on Toutiao, one of the new emerging mobile apps focused on AI and their applications in news and information. We discussed the chronology, product & services and business models behind Toutiao’s rise among the 2nd wave of technology giants (Toutiao, Meituan-Dianping & Didi) in China and how their surprised rise has no influence from the BAT in China.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Matthew Brennan, Co-founder of China Channel dot co (chinachannel.co, @MattyBGooner , Linkedin, Wechat:Yowdy-CQ) [0:40]

Re-introduction
Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [1:23]

Toutiao (Wikipedia, mobile app) [2:20]

Jinri-Toutiao (Today’s Headlines) is a mobile-web app that recommends personalized information to users based on artificial intelligence. As of Jan 2017, they have 700M users, & 175 monthly active users. Over 78 million people use Toutiao for an average time of 76 minutes on a daily basis, resulting in 1.3 billion articles read every day.
Can you discuss the vision and mission of Toutiao? [3:11]
How does a publisher join Toutiao to publish news similar to Wechat’s Official Accounts? [4:02]
Can you describe the chronology of how Toutiao rise to dominance? Founder: Zhang Yiming, formerly from Microsoft [4:57]
What are the interesting products and services of Toutiao? [8:58]
Does Toutiao connect to other major logins such as Wechat or QQ login? [11:40]
What is the user behavior for Toutiao like?  [12:19]
How do they generate revenue and monetize their activities? Advertising similar to Facebook and Ecommerce with a partnership with JD dot com [14:35]
In your opinion, with Tencent investing heavily in AI and Wechat, will they directly compete with Toutiao at some point? [18:59]
Who are the investors behind Toutiao? Weibo, Sequoia, Yuri Milner (DST). [21:30]
Where do you see Toutiao’s focus be in the next 12 months? [23:08]

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