ByteDance executive disputes 'Byte Time' claim, citing inaccurate analysis

Huo Xing Finance reports that on the evening of October 27, Li Liang, Vice President of ByteDance, responded on Weibo to Qin Shu, a media figure and financial observer, who had proposed the concept of “ByteDance Time” in Chinese internet history. Liang called this characterization “highly imprecise and utterly baseless.” He stated that no single company can be defined as “the XX time of Chinese internet”; instant messaging maintains a relatively stable market structure due to its network effect moat, while short films and short videos are highly competitive with rapidly shifting market dynamics. He added that Tencent’s short film and short video growth rates far exceed those of Douyin and Hongguo, and that instant messaging, gaming, e-commerce, and music also consume significant user time. He subsequently posted that Qin Shu’s analysis contained several fundamental factual errors. On October 26, Qin Shu published an article on his WeChat public account “Qin Shu’s Circle,” citing data from Nomura Securities and QuestMobile, stating that in the top 50 mobile internet apps by usage time in July 2026, Douyin surpassed WeChat for the first time, accounting for 19.4% compared to WeChat’s 18.8%; ByteDance’s total app usage share reached 40.9%, while Tencent’s was 29.1%. He questioned whether the Chinese internet was shifting from “Tencent Time” to “ByteDance Time,” or from “WeChat Time” to “Douyin + Hongguo Time.” Earlier that day, Qin Shu posted on his Moments that in the August 2026 rankings, ByteDance’s share had risen to 41.8% while Tencent’s fell to 28.6%, a gap of 13.2 percentage points. He argued that “ByteDance Time” is a valid summary of ByteDance’s total usage share surpassing 40%, calling it “a very realistic fact,” while emphasizing that user time share does not equate to user value share. On the same day, Hongguo Short Video, ByteDance’s short-form drama platform, issued a statement denying claims circulating online that its annualized revenue was approaching RMB 40 billion or that its 2026 revenue reached RMB 42–45 billion. The statement said these figures were unfounded, with no factual basis for comparisons, calculations, or derived interpretations, and emphasized that most revenue is currently reinvested into content creator payouts, copyright guarantees, and support for high-quality content. Third-party data shows that as of July 2026, Hongguo Short Video had 168 million daily active users, a year-over-year increase of 107%. On October 19, Liu Xing, Head of Public Relations at DouBao, responded to claims that “over half of China’s computing power is being used to produce feel-good dramas,” calling the data unreliable. He noted that for ByteDance specifically, only about 10% of its total computing power is allocated to training and inference for video generation models.