With a slight interface redesign, ByteDance has made it easier for users of its aggregation app Jinri Toutiao to access mini-programmes.
Mini-programmes—which also exist in the apps of Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—are sub-applications that are at times designed by third parties.
Jinri Toutiao, which boasts 200 million monthly active users (MAU), launched its mini-programme feature last November. At the time, users were only able to deploy them by using keywords in searches. Now, all mini-programmes can be accessed via the index page.
The app’s index revamp came after its parent company ByteDance’s acquisition of a Shanghai-based game developer, a move widely interpreted by tech observers as a challenge to Tencent’s dominance in the game industry.
With the newly added index entry point, Jinri Toutiao is angling to follow Tencent’s footsteps and steer its vast pool of MAUs into providing a new revenue channel. Tencent’s mini-programmes are used by more than 600 million WeChat users, with 90% of users spending more than RMB 200 (US$30) each month through these applications, according to a third-party report published last July.
Write to Luna Lin at lunalin@kr-asia.com