Head of TikTok's parent company to step down

ANKARA

The founder and chief executive officer of China’s ByteDance has announced to step down from his role at the end of this year, paving way for a leadership change.

ByteDance owns the popular short-video social media platform TikTok.

Zhang Yiming, in a letter addressed to ByteDance employees, said he will focus on long-term strategy, corporate culture and social responsibility after he steps down as CEO.

He will be succeeded by Liang Rubo, who is a co-founder of the ByteDance and currently heads the human resources division of the company, Chinese daily Global Times reported.

ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, was founded in 2012 and has around 60,000 employees.

“Now, for the long-term development of the company, Zhang needs to get out of the daily management and focus on the work that is not urgent but important to the development of the company, so as to create more possibilities. Therefore, I will take over his responsibilities as CEO. It's a big challenge for me and there's a lot of pressure,” successor Liang told employees in an internal letter on Thursday.

TikTok has earned huge success in a short span of time and is a popular smartphone video application among youngsters.