Toutiao Reportedly Buying Chinese AR Selfie App Faceu For $300M

▤ Summary

Toutiao, one of the highest valued Chinese tech company with a current valuation of US$20 billion, has been aggressively buying businesses around its core news recommendation app. In November, it invested US$50 million in Live.me, a popular live streaming platform among young adults in the U.S., and acquired China’s lip-syncing video app Musical.ly. The latest deal sees Toutiao buying a popular AR-based selfie app with 250 million registered users. This way, users will be able to see their selfie with the intended effect in real time, rather than taking a photo and then editing it afterward. Faceu’s current photo editing app was launched in 2016, and its 250 million users as of October 2017 were mostly female and very young.

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