ByteDance: The Chinese company behind global TikTok craze
Skip to main content
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Saturday
February 04, 2023

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Economy
    • Aviation
    • Bazaar
    • Budget
    • Industry
    • NBR
    • RMG
    • Corporates
  • Stocks
  • Analysis
  • World+Biz
  • Sports
  • Features
    • Book Review
    • Brands
    • Earth
    • Explorer
    • Fact Check
    • Family
    • Food
    • Game Reviews
    • Good Practices
    • Habitat
    • Humour
    • In Focus
    • Luxury
    • Mode
    • Panorama
    • Pursuit
    • Wealth
    • Wellbeing
    • Wheels
  • Epaper
  • More
    • Subscribe
    • Videos
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • COVID-19
    • Games
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Podcast
    • Quiz
    • Tech
    • Trial By Trivia
    • Magazine
  • বাংলা
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2023
ByteDance: The Chinese company behind global TikTok craze

Global Economy

BSS/AFP
27 November, 2019, 11:25 am
Last modified: 27 November, 2019, 01:49 pm

Related News

  • TikTok hosts first digital safety event in Bangladesh
  • TikTok announces Safety Ambassadors Campaign in Bangladesh
  • TikTok steps up efforts to clinch US security deal
  • Waste of tears -- fake 'onion water' flu cure exposes disparities
  • Pelosi backs adding TikTok government device ban to funding bill

ByteDance: The Chinese company behind global TikTok craze

Bytedance prides itself on using artificial intelligence to personalise newsfeeds according to users’ interests

BSS/AFP
27 November, 2019, 11:25 am
Last modified: 27 November, 2019, 01:49 pm
ByteDance: The Chinese company behind global TikTok craze

The Chinese billionaire behind teen phenomenon TikTok is a 36-year-old tech guru whose eye for youth trends and pioneering use of AI has blasted the app to global success — while working hand-in-glove with censors to control content within China.

Zhang Yiming's Beijing-based startup Bytedance owns TikTok, whose kaleidoscopic feeds of 15 to 60-second clips feature everything from hair-dye tutorials to dance routines and jokes about daily life.

Since launching in 2017, TikTok has been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times, according to US-based research agency Sensor Tower. It has huge followings in India, the US, Indonesia and elsewhere.

But its rise has raised security fears and last month two senior US senators called for a government review of the app, saying it could leave users vulnerable to spying by Beijing.

Bytedance, which Zhang founded in 2012, prides itself on using artificial intelligence to personalise newsfeeds according to users' interests.

The company has had "huge and immediate success" because it pays close attention to its young users, said Bo Ji, assistant dean for the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

"The new generation… want to share their real feelings, whether good or bad. They are more direct and expressive," he said.

TikTok is Bytedance's most popular overseas app, while its other products in China and abroad include news aggregators and productivity tools.

Together they have taken Zhang — a programmer before he became a businessman — to the highest echelons of China's billionaire club.

In 2019, he was listed in the top 20 of the Hurun China Rich List with $13.5 billion in wealth, surpassing more established tech tycoons, such as the founder of search giant Baidu.

Zhang's fortunes were given a huge boost with Bytedance's 2017 acquisition of lip-syncing video app Musical.ly — later merged with TikTok — in a deal reportedly worth as much as $1 billion.

"Mr Zhang is an unusual Chinese entrepreneur," said Bo. "He built something for the world; he understands the young people and their psychology."

Disruptive technology

Liu Xingliang, dean of the DCCI research centre, told AFP that Zhang represents a new wave of entrepreneurs and a different breed to China's most famous tycoon, Alibaba's Jack Ma.

He is "more like a young Pony Ma," Liu said, comparing Zhang to the 48- year-old co-founder of Chinese internet giant Tencent.

This is because Zhang "used to be a programmer, paid more attention to products, and knew the technology well", he said.

Bytedance also operates a Chinese version of TikTok, called Douyin. It is the top short video app in China, with over 400 million monthly active users, according to iResearch.

Douyin, launched in 2016, attracted users by bringing onboard top celebrities like Chinese actor and singer Kris Wu.

But Bytedance's first flagship product was the immensely popular Chinese news aggregation app Jinri Toutiao, or "today's headlines".

"(Toutiao) has changed Chinese reading habits… they will know what you like to watch, and you will have the things you like to see recommended to you,' said Liu.

Aside from TikTok, Bytedance also runs TopBuzz in the US, an English- language news aggregation app that the company was reportedly trying to sell in September.

In 2016 it became a controlling stakeholder of BaBe, an Indonesian news app with more than 30 million downloads since its launch in October 2013.

Productivity app and Slack-competitor Lark is Bytedance's latest product, which features cloud storage, chat and calendar functions.

And according to recent reports, the company is also planning to launch its own music streaming service to compete with subscription models like Spotify and Apple.

Chinese censorship

In the mainland, China Bytedance employs thousands of censors to scrub out inappropriate content in its domestic platforms — at a significant cost to the company.

It reportedly hired 2,000 censors in January 2018 after Beijing accused its news aggregation app of "spreading pornographic and vulgar information".

It then promised to increase its internal censorship staff to 10,000 after being temporarily banned by the government in a widening content crackdown.

Censorship is common in China where the internet is tightly controlled.

But going global has brought its own censorship challenges for TikTok, which is blocked in Bangladesh and was briefly banned by an Indian court over claims it was promoting pornography among children.

It was also hit with an enormous fine in the US for illegally collecting information from children.

One TikTok video that went viral this week contained criticism — hidden within a clip that appeared to offer tips on eyelash curling — of China's mass detention of Muslims in its Xinjiang region.

A Twitter account apparently belonging to the same teenager who posted the video said she had been suspended "for trying to spread awareness" — a claim disputed by the app. The video was readily available on TikTok Wednesday.

TikTok has sought to distance itself from China, saying in October that it is "not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government."

But US senators have warned in a letter that TikTok's owner ByteDance could be forced to share user information with Chinese intelligence, and could also be used to influence upcoming US elections.

World+Biz / Top News

ByteDance / TikTok

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • Illustration: TBS
    Cash-strapped banks fail to maintain emergency cash
  • Is the IMF to blame for growing pressure on your wallet?
    Is the IMF to blame for growing pressure on your wallet?
  • Photo: Joynal Abedin Shishir/TBS
    BNP's anti-govt rally underway at Nayapaltan

MOST VIEWED

  • Demonstrators wait in line after entering the Presidential Secretariat premises, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled, amid the country's economic crisis, in Colombo, Sri Lanka July 10, 2022. File Photo: REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte
    Sri Lanka marks independence anniversary amid economic woes
  • Gautam Adani. Photo: Bloomberg
    Bloomberg Billionaires Index: Adani slips from top 20 as rout deepens
  • Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
    Google, Apple, Amazon give investors reason to fret
  • Goldman Sachs has taken one of the most ambitious approaches to getting employees back to their desks. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
    US reports blowout job growth; unemployment rate lowest since 1969
  • File Photo: Reuters
    Oil falls about 3% as strong US jobs data prompt interest rate concerns
  • Citizens in Peshawar protest rising food prices. Photo: Reuters.
    Is Pakistan's economic collapse imminent?

Related News

  • TikTok hosts first digital safety event in Bangladesh
  • TikTok announces Safety Ambassadors Campaign in Bangladesh
  • TikTok steps up efforts to clinch US security deal
  • Waste of tears -- fake 'onion water' flu cure exposes disparities
  • Pelosi backs adding TikTok government device ban to funding bill

Features

Sketch: TBS

Say 'Salud' before your salad main course

6h | Food
Coots running. Photo: Enam Ul Haque

Cute Coot of Baikka Beel: 'And yet he was as bald as a coot'

15m | Panorama
With only one government run specialised cancer hospital in the capital — the National Institute Of Cancer Research and Hospital (NICRH) in Mohakhali — patients have no option but to resort to private hospitals. Photo: Noor A Alam.

Cancer care: Medical treatment and beyond

6h | Panorama
Andy Mukherjee. Sketch: TBS

What makes India's billionaires' support special for Adani

1d | Panorama

More Videos from TBS

Concord launches new plant to produce environment friendly bricks

Concord launches new plant to produce environment friendly bricks

2h | TBS Stories
How Asif Khan would invest his fresh funds right now

How Asif Khan would invest his fresh funds right now

3h | TBS Markets
A proper price formula can help investors to plan big

A proper price formula can help investors to plan big

1d | TBS Round Table
Rumors about Sarika that everyone thinks are true

Rumors about Sarika that everyone thinks are true

1d | TBS Entertainment

Most Read

1
Leepu realised his love for cars from a young age and for the last 40 years, he has transformed, designed and customised hundreds of cars. Photo: Collected
Panorama

'I am not crazy about cars anymore': Nizamuddin Awlia Leepu

2
Photo: Collected
Energy

8 Ctg power plants out of production

3
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) logo is seen outside the headquarters building in Washington, U.S., September 4, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
Economy

IMF approves $4.7 billion loan for Bangladesh, calls for ambitious reforms

4
Fund cut as Dhaka's fast-track transit projects on slow spending lane
Infrastructure

Fund cut as Dhaka's fast-track transit projects on slow spending lane

5
Photo: Collected
Court

Japanese mother gets guardianship of daughters, free to leave country

6
Belal Ahmed new acting chairman of SIBL
Banking

Belal Ahmed new acting chairman of SIBL

EMAIL US
[email protected]
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2023
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - [email protected]

For advertisement- [email protected]