Available in 14 Indian languages including Hindi and Marathi, the India-based app offers users a wide range of short videos, jokes, and entertainment news. To better compete with ShareChat, Helo is reportedly introducing English content and aims to double its 50 million monthly active users by the end of last year. Few tech startups have taken off as quickly as Beijing-based ByteDance, the creator of the highly popular 15-second video app, TikTok. In just two years, TikTok has emerged to rival companies like Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat, and Facebook with more than 1 billion downloads in 150 markets worldwide and 75 languages.
Based in Bengaluru, the app is sort of an Indian version of Toutiao, also offering curated content using machine learning technologies to its users in 14 Indian languages. With over 188 million daily active users, the app is one of the biggest news aggregators in India. The success of ByteDance began with the rise of Toutiao, which is now the biggest news aggregator in China. It also has others like TopBuzz, a platform that recommends trending videos and articles to users, and BaBe, a news aggregation app in Indonesia. Founded in 2012 by tech entrepreneur Yiming Zhang, ByteDance quickly launched a suite of apps beginning that same year with Neihan Duanzi, a platform where users shared jokes in the form of short videos, memes and written posts. House Committee on Energy and Commerce to address accusations that the app is a threat to American national security.
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The incident prompted How to buy crypto with apple pay Zhang to publicly apologize for “publishing a product that 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. TikTok recently attained the traditional social network rite of passage of having Facebook brazenly rip it off. And Bytedance’s news services inevitably risk running into the same algorithmic pitfalls that have plagued Facebook for years; the company’s apps have been accused of spreading fake news in countries such as India and beyond.
Other products and acquisitions
- 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.
- Users can buy virtual currency which they then gift to content creators.
- The app is positioned as an important channel (link in Chinese) for directing traffic to other ByteDance apps such as Douyin, according to Chinese media coverage.
- It remains to be seen whether TikTok can convince US lawmakers that it poses no threat — but the showdown in Washington has highlighted larger questions about security and data privacy that could see other apps come under fire.
- In July 2018, ByteDance said Douyin and TikTok had 500 million monthly average users (MAUs).
Bytedance reportedly even tried to buy Reddit in 2016, but it was rebuffed. TikTok’s looming legal challenge will be forex trading apps one of several that could eventually reach the US Supreme Court that could completely redefine online speech. Other high-profile cases that will determine whether social media companies can moderate content on their platforms are also likely to be decided this year. But the wildly popular platform, developed with homegrown Chinese technology, isn’t accessible in China.
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In the most recent clash this summer, Bytedance accused Tencent of blocking TikTok videos from its platforms, including dominant messaging app WeChat; Tencent retorted by suing Bytedance for libel and anti-competitive practices. Then in 2017, the privately-owned tech company bought a US-based video startup and released TikTok as the overseas version of Douyin. It also bought popular lip syncing app musical.ly, and moved those users onto TikTok in 2018. The app started off as a Q&A site embedded in Toutiao in 2016 and quickly took off, with over 10,000 questions posted (link in Chinese) on the platform by March 2017, and more than 100,000 answers added every day. Taking note of its strong growth, ByteDance spun the feature out from Toutiao that year.
To overcome that right, the government’s strongest argument is based on national security, said Nate Persily, Stanford law professor and Founding Co-Director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center. “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”. The company says it now routes all of its US traffic through infrastructure in the United States, and that it is deleting previously collected data. It has also said that Douyin employees do not have access to TikTok’s US user data. Southeast Asia has been the focus for Chinese tech companies that are trying to hedge against slower economic growth at home. In 2016, the company became a controlling shareholder of BaBe (Baca Berita), an Indonesian news aggregator that claims to have had more than 30 million downloads as of 2019.
Of course, TikTok’s devoted and rapidly growing audience wouldn’t say that the appeal of the app has anything to do alpari review 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 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. For years, China has tried to curb video game addiction and other unhealthy online habits.
