My understanding is that A.me really was a badly built app, at least in the beginning. But it was still an act of judgment to go “ok, this doesn’t work, and maybe it’s the format that sucks, or maybe there’s something wrong with the positioning, and maybe it’s the app that sucks … which is it? We know (from the growth of short videos in Toutiao) that the category is promising … and the app functionality stinks, so let’s fix that first.”
And that, along with the company’s willingness to give it another shot after the rebranding, I really do admire.