ByteDance has already been a threat to Tencent in terms of the social media industry, and now it’s creeping into Baidu’s territory by featuring a search engine service. Dating back to Jan. 16th, the news aggregator app Today’s Headline, owned by ByteDance, announced the availability of a search function by entering keywords using the built-in search-bar but results returned were limited to self-contributed content. Yet, tested by SinaTech earlier this week, search results provided have included external links as well, which signals its ambition in the search engine area. In order to stand out from its rivals, ByteDance was equipped with a more “tailor-made” search results provision system which benefits from Today’s Headline’s advanced feeds algorithm and mass data acquisition capability.
