今日头条秘密孵化K12网校，对标猿辅导 – 36Kr
What happened: Bytedance is forming an online education platform for kindergarten, primary, and high school students, media outlet 36Kr reported on Tuesday. The platform will debut in time for the 2019 summer holidays and will initially offer live-streamed mathematics courses for primary school students. It will hire former employees of major educational training sites such as Xueersi and Yuanfudao.
Why it’s important: The platform launch marks Bytedance’s push for a larger share of the online education market. According to 36Kr, Bytedance has been hiring large numbers of course consultants and product operations personnel for K-12 products since 2018, possibly in preparation for the new platform. The company’s two existing education products—one-on-one English tutoring platform Gogokid and foreign teacher live-streaming platform aiKID—haven’t had much success despite various promotional efforts. However, the new platform could see Bytedance leverage the experience it has gained and become a major player in the field.