How ByteDance Became the Worlds Most Valuable Startup

A Chinese state-owned entity owns 1 percent of Douyin, according to the ByteDance website. TikTok has said this is a requirement under Chinese law and does not impact ByteDance’s international operations. ByteDance’s founders have a 20 percent stake, and the remainder is held by employees, according to TikTok. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world as a leading global news agency. AFP provides fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the issues affecting our daily lives.

1. The first product the group produced was the app Neihan Duanzi (“profound gags”), which allowed users to share jokes and memes.
2. A Chinese state-owned entity owns 1 percent of Douyin, according to the ByteDance website.
3. Approximately a year later, ByteDance accelerated globalization with the launch of its global short video product, TikTok.
4. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that they had begun an investigation in late 2022 into the claim against ByteDance.

Despite this reassurance, the U.S. state of Montana passed a law to ban the app in the state. Increased regulatory barriers were also introduced against the company because of tensions between the United States and China. National security concerns about the collection of user data led the U.S. government to ban the app from being installed on government-issued devices. Legislation was also introduced that could lead to a national ban of the platform altogether. Despite the company’s grandiose success, ByteDance has faced international scrutiny as a result of accusations that the company imposes censorship in favour of the Chinese government.

At just 10 years old, ByteDance, the most valuable startup in the world, has shattered records for growth. In 2021, with 1.9 billion monthly active users in 150 countries, and an employee base of over 110,000, the company recorded an astonishing $58 billion in revenues. Most users know the company only by its hit short-video app TikTok, which has been downloaded over 3 billion times globally, a feat only exceeded by Meta and its family of apps. Respectively, Toutiao and Douyin account for 20% and 60% of the company’s total advertising revenues.

How ByteDance Became the World’s Most Valuable Startup

Bytedance believes that its algorithmic approach to content could work around the world, and it has developed Toutiao-like apps for other markets. Helo, for example, is a similar product aimed at India with support for 14 local vernaculars, and TopBuzz does a similar thing in English. But so far, its highest-profile efforts in Western markets have focused on creative communities.

Bytedance’s flagship product in China is actually Jinri Toutiao (“Today’s Headlines”), a massively popular news aggregation service that uses AI to track reader habits and push them stories from various sources. Most of the content is decidedly low-brow and could be called “clickbait” if not for the fact that it keeps people coming back. Since it launched in 2012, Toutiao has accumulated hundreds of millions of daily active users who are hooked on its personalized blend of articles. ByteDance products have faced government-led investigations and large-scale bans in other countries, including Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey. Hello and TikTok were banned in India, thereby removing millions of users from the apps’ reach.

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The company bought short movie-making app Flipagram last year and rebranded it as Vigo Video, then followed up by acquiring Musical.ly to merge with its similar service Douyin. The app was an international version of Douyin, which was released in China in 2016 and now has hundreds of millions of users. With TikTok, rebranded from the joining of Musical.ly and Douyin, Bytedance has a global hit. The company says it racked up more downloads in the US than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube in both September and October, and TikTok now has over half a billion people worldwide using it monthly.

TikTok uses advanced algorithmic methods to predict which videos users will enjoy and thus create a personalized assortment of videos for them to peruse on their “For You” page (FYP). ByteDance, Chinese technology company that developed novel video-sharing social networking applications, most notably TikTok. ByteDance also serves as the parent company of several popular social media and news apps. Zhang and Tencent founder Pony Ma have jabbed at each other in public, and the companies have filed multiple lawsuits against one another.

TikTok has said around 60 percent of ByteDance is owned by institutional investors including US giant BlackRock. ByteDance has rocketed in recent years to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth around https://www.day-trading.info/what-is-the-difference-between-data-and-4/ $225 billion, according to market intelligence firm CP Insights. But with such a large number of engaged users and a steep upward trajectory, it also shouldn’t have too much trouble finding ways to turn a profit.

Censorship, surveillance, and data privacy concerns

For example, users have accused the company of deleting articles on BaBe that were critical of the Chinese government. In 2019 TikTok user Feroza Aziz’s account was suspended after she posted a video criticizing the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghur Muslims. A ByteDance spokesman initially claimed that Aziz was suspended because of a previous offense that violated TikTok’s policies. TikTok later claimed that a “moderation error” caused the ban and offered Aziz an apology.

How China’s Bytedance became the world’s most valuable startup

The app has been downloaded nearly 80 million times in the US, with even the likes of Jimmy Fallon giving it high-profile endorsements. TikTok is banned from government employees’ work phones in the United States and several other nations including Australia and Canada over security concerns. Of course, TikTok’s devoted and rapidly growing audience wouldn’t say that the appeal of the app has anything to do with AI. But the app’s success does follow a familiar pattern for Bytedance, which has demonstrated a startling ability to launch, grow, and sustain services that have users hooked. You could be forgiven for not having heard the name Bytedance before the recent news.

The Chinese commerce ministry published rules in 2020 that added “civilian use” to a list of technologies that are restricted for export. A large number of US lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — are not convinced that TikTok is independent of Beijing despite being headquartered outside China. AFP, along with more than 100 fact-checking organisations, is paid by TikTok and Facebook parent Meta to verify videos that potentially contain false information.

ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017, and the app took the world by storm, crossing a billion users in four years. “Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, describing the bill as “bullying”. TikTok’s CEO has told Congress that the firm has never been asked by the Chinese government for US user data nor has it provided it. These concerns have been echoed by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies — including by the FBI director this week — as well as regulators elsewhere. The app has been a diplomatic hot potato between the United States and China since the administration of former president Donald Trump, who once wanted to ban the app.

It quickly took off in markets like Southeast Asia, signaling a new opportunity for the company. ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in November 2017 and subsequently merged it with TikTok. Today, the TikTok platform, which is available outside of China, has become the leading destination for short-form mobile videos worldwide. The incident prompted Zhang to publicly apologize for “publishing a product that https://www.topforexnews.org/news/pci-etf-technical-analysis/ collided with core socialist values,” and it highlights the potential pitfalls of operating online platforms in China. Tencent has had its clashes with the government, too, most recently being hit by restrictions on video game releases and play time. But if Bytedance can make the most of what appears to be a greater agility in operating overseas, that could be a key advantage for the younger company.

The founder, 35-year-old Zhang Yiming, rarely gives interviews, and the company’s Western-facing media presence is close to nonexistent. Bytedance is the first Chinese internet company with a significant, genuinely engaged following around the world, which means it’s worthy of serious attention. Founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012, ByteDance developed the video-sharing apps TikTok the difference between data and information in health care and Douyin. Thanks to the explosive growth of these apps, ByteDance has branched out into e-commerce and travel bookings, and also released a video editing app. The valuation is eye-grabbing, to be sure, and it would be perfectly reasonable to suggest that, say, Uber will ultimately be the bigger deal in the future. At this point, though, it wouldn’t be so reasonable to ignore Bytedance altogether.