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Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

bloomberg.com

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Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#31

Post by jasode »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #27

>Real question: Is there some social etiquette rule that says describing to a news audience as "unknown" is rude? Honestly, I've never heard of that. You and the other person calling it a compliment are either the same person, or you're both social robots who think referring to human beings as Unknowns is a nice way to treat a person. Just use his name in the headline, how hard is that?!

>Just use his name in the headline, how hard is that?!

Because "unknown" in the title is more descriptive of the general public's (lack of) awareness of the person's identity. (I assume Bloomberg's audience is mostly North America.)

It's very common to use "unknown" in the title and the full name in the body of the the article which Bloomberg has done here. The article's first sentence has his full name: Zhang Yiming. To me, this appears respectful and not insulting.

>You and the other guy calling it a compliment are either the same person, or you're both social robots

I think throwing a veiled insult at me is ironic.

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#32

Post by curuinor »

mrleiter wrote: post #10

> But as with Facebook at the same stage of its life, Bytedance now faces questions over when or even how it will start making a profit. Amazing. $75b valuation, loads of cash to run ops and not have your burn rate run you into the ground. Clearly the worth here lies in the apparently very strong AI they use to detect trends. Again, as with Shazam, detecting trends early is obviously quite valuable.

shazam was $400 million after two decades and was materially better at it than douyin....

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#33

Post by elldoubleyew »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #13
superasn wrote: post #7

> Bytedance now faces questions over when or even how it will start making a profit. $75B value and it still faces the most basic question. Makes me feel I don't understand business at all. Also its main app seems to be musically. I have only heard of it but it seems a little to an app like Dubsmash. Did dubsmash ever make any money? What is the business model for such apps?

I was digging to find it but gave up. if musical.ly is their main app then this is surely an overestimation of their valuation. I haven't heard a single good thing about musical.ly, but maybe that's just because it's not my crowd.

Its not necessarily musical.ly but its Chinese counterpart, Douyin. Douyin is absolutely massive in China, think Snapchat/Instagram/Vine but much more popular.

They run ads between the short videos, I would imagine that ad space is very valuable to some Chinese companies. I've never used Musical.ly however I imagine its similar just rebranded for an American market.

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#34

Post by rchaud »

I can't be the only feeling a bit depressed that these highly valued companies are still in the "maximize eyeballs for advertising $" business. $75 billion for finding a way to keep people browsing low-content crap for longer. I'm certainly not singling out Chinese companies for this exact thing is the cornerstone of FB's business model and they're one of the biggest companies in the world.

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#36

Post by justaman »

394549 wrote: post #30
superasn wrote: post #7

> Bytedance now faces questions over when or even how it will start making a profit. $75B value and it still faces the most basic question. Makes me feel I don't understand business at all. Also its main app seems to be musically. I have only heard of it but it seems a little to an app like Dubsmash. Did dubsmash ever make any money? What is the business model for such apps?

> $75B value and it still faces the most basic question. Makes me feel I don't understand business at all. You understand business, just not the shell-game that's grown up around it.

I truly hope the advertising driven tech industry dies and a general paid service model takes it place. The long term affect adverts have on humans cannot be positive.

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#37

Post by draw_down »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #27

>Real question: Is there some social etiquette rule that says describing to a news audience as "unknown" is rude? Honestly, I've never heard of that. You and the other person calling it a compliment are either the same person, or you're both social robots who think referring to human beings as Unknowns is a nice way to treat a person. Just use his name in the headline, how hard is that?!

I'm sorry but this crusade is insane. There is zero reason to get so upset at describing him this way

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#38

Post by ArchTypical »

jasode wrote: post #31
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #27

>Real question: Is there some social etiquette rule that says describing to a news audience as "unknown" is rude? Honestly, I've never heard of that. You and the other person calling it a compliment are either the same person, or you're both social robots who think referring to human beings as Unknowns is a nice way to treat a person. Just use his name in the headline, how hard is that?!

>Just use his name in the headline, how hard is that?! Because " unknown " in the title is more descriptive of the general public's (lack of) awareness of the person's identity. (I assume Bloomberg's audience is mostly North America.) It's very common to use "unknown" in the title and the full name in the body of the the article which Bloomberg has done here. The article's first sentence has his full name: Zhang Yimi…

>> You and the other guy calling it a compliment are either the same person, or you're both social robots

> I think throwing a veiled insult at me is ironic.

That wasn't a veiled insult, nor was it ironic, which is funny.

Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round

#39

Post by spanktheuser »

superasn wrote: post #7

> Bytedance now faces questions over when or even how it will start making a profit. $75B value and it still faces the most basic question. Makes me feel I don't understand business at all. Also its main app seems to be musically. I have only heard of it but it seems a little to an app like Dubsmash. Did dubsmash ever make any money? What is the business model for such apps?

> $75B value and it still faces the most basic question. Makes me feel I don't understand business at all.

Business journalism really does a disservice when it pushes the "they have no revenue model" angle for these massively scaling traffic aggregators. It was a bit interesting when this was written of Yahoo, I guess, since we didn't have proof yet that online advertising was a viable business model.

In any case, the playbook is very well understood. Build a loyal audience numbering minimally in the hundreds of millions (Small audience pubs only achieve success with subscription-based models. Mid-sized audience aggregators may not have a viable business model at all). Demonstrate that the cost of building said audience is either free or pennies per user (e.g. unpaid viral audience growth). Make several dollars to tens of dollars per user per year by running advertisements to said audience. The more relevant or (lately) emotionally compelling the advertisements the more you'll earn per year per user.

Of those components, building an enormous audience is the hardest part, which is why every company that has followed this model, from google to snapchat, has focused on that long before building a corresponding revenue stream.

We've seen this model a dozen times and it's understood well enough that financiers are able to approximate the value of Bytedance future revenue streams rather confidently.

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