The competition in the electronic signature industry is a microcosm of the To B business competition among Internet giants, and we will wait and see who can stand out from the all-round competition from resources, to capabilities, and then to the ecosystem. Economist Brian Arthur writes in The Nature of Technology, "A technology is shared by other technologies, so that as the application of these technologies improves, a great deal of progress is automatically produced."
Electronic signature based on digital encryption technology is such an important technical application that can be shared and can widely generate commercial efficiency progress. Recently, according to a number of domestic technology job title email list media reports, ByteDance has launched an online contract platform called "Electronic Pull". Some observers believe that ByteDance’s move is intended to seize the electronic signature market with Alibaba and Tencent. According to public information, the main developer of the "Electronic Pull" product is Beijing Matrix Decomposition Technology Co., Ltd.
According to the information from Tianyancha, the actual controller of the company is suspected to be the founder of ByteDance and the global CEO Zhang Yiming. From this point of view, the fact that ByteDance has entered the electronic signature track is beyond doubt, but what are the profound meanings of this move besides competing with Ali and Tencent, we may wish to continue to delve into it. ByteDance To B: Jump from "Layman" to "Expert" During the epidemic, most companies have delayed their resumption of work, and online office has become the only way to maintain the normal operation of the company. However,
due to the impact of the resumption of work in the express delivery industry, how to ensure the normal signing of contracts has become an urgent problem to be solved during the epidemic. Electronic contracts and electronic The market demand for signatures has also grown. It is not surprising that ByteDance entered the ToB field. In March this year, ByteDance launched the coordinating office app "Feishu Documents". From the point of view of the time node, the launch of Feishu by ByteDance coincided with the outbreak of online office demand during the epidemic.
According to Feishu’s official website, this is a collaborative office tool that focuses on media, Internet, education, retail, legal and other industries. It is not difficult to find that these fields overlap with Byte’s business. The launch of the electronic signature ToB application this time is another ToB application launched by ByteDance after the launch of the "Feishu Conference" in February. ByteDance’s low-key entry into the electronic signature business is similar to the previous one. ByteDance’s expansion in certain fields follows the logic of “from the inside out, attacking and retreating”,
which is very structured. For example, Toutiao’s search business has always been regarded as a direct challenge to Baidu, but on the one hand, Baidu’s technical and content barriers in the search field are difficult to be subverted, and on the other hand, from ByteDance itself. In other words, search is also driven by internal factors to a certain extent: after the existing traffic ecology of Bytes is built, search is more meaningful to improve the efficiency of internal traffic synergy. And once the search business matures, it cannot rule out the possibility that it can further seize the search market share.