MUMBAI: Walt Disney Company’s top executive Kevin Mayer has resigned to take up the top executive job at short-video app TikTok, which has seen its popularity soaring during the Covid2019 pandemic.

According to a New York Times report, the 58-year-old will also serve as chief operating officer of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company that owns TikTok.

“I was happy with my job at Disney, The magnitude of this opportunity was just something I couldn’t pass up,” Mayer told New York Times over phone

Mayer has worked on services like Disney Plus, which has been a phenomenal hit with around 55 million subscribers, and the prominent OTT in India Hotstar.

According to him, gaming and music are two possibilities for expansion.

After having overseen the direct-to-consumer and global division for the two years, he had served as Disney’s chief strategy officer. Mayer joined Disney way back in 1993. He left the company in 2000 and joined Playboy.com. Later he returned to Disney and started working on Go.com, which later bit the dust.

Rebecca Campbell has been named as Mayer’s successor.

That soaring popularity of the TikTok, an immense feat for a Chinese company, has not gone down well with many government agencies in the US. In fact, the military has prevented its workers from downloading or using TikTok. Recently, a Republican senator even proposed a law to bar federal employees from using it.

In the first quarter of 20202, TikTok’s has been downloaded 307 million times, more than any other app in the world, as per Sensor Tower data.

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