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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

#51

Post by mistrial9 »

insalada wrote: post #16

Here's me, wandering around the internet for multiple decades now. Tuning into Slashdot for maybe 10 years, HN for about 5 years, I'm tuned into pretty much all of the new school recent developments and current events, across a wide range of technologies, and I've never heard of this particular company, neither heard nor used of any of its products, nor heard mention of any of them, until right now, today, and it's t…

this whole fame+valuation approach serves the purposes of .. who ? other posts mention the shallow (and worse) nature of this kind of adspace.. long toiling projects starve while this is the monetary king-of-the-hill ? ugly

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

#52

Post by fspeech »

sorenjan wrote: post #42
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've never used Musica.ly myself, and I don't have any kids of my own, but I came across this video [0] where a Youtuber looked at clips from it. It seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen, I can't see how it could be worth that much money. I wouldn't want any of my future kids anywhere near there. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmphkNDosg (NSFW language)

GP was wrong. They acquired musica.ly in 2017 for $800 million. Musica.ly accounts for a minuscule portion of their valuation. The article itself clearly spells out what Bytedance's main businesses are, but commenters don't appear to want to read!

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

#53

Post by decimalplace »

plink wrote: post #35

Thanks to this article I'm now aware that Musically is Chinese. That's all the info I need to explain to my kid why it needs to be deleted from her phone. Thank you, Bloomberg!

Are you ethnically Chinese yourself (but identify with HongKongers / Taiwanese)? Cos its a typical response from people from hk or tw

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

#54

Post by earenndil »

stephenr wrote: post #21

The way things go these days, you need to consider the context of this headline (and the whole article really). Worlds most valuable dog shit on a stick isn't something anyone cares about, regardless of how much someone says its worth. Similarly that dog shit on a stick doesn't make it's owner any money. So. What exactly is the difference?

> $75B

> doesn't make it's[sic] owner any money

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

#55

Post by module0000 »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #9

>35-Year-Old Unknown First of all, that's rude. Second, if they have a $75b valuation and no profit plan, that's not likely a good sign. I doubt China's P2P and venture capital markets are related, but I'd bet they gave a high valuation just to grab headlines. Also, it'll eventually get censored like everything else in China, so 'doing better than Baidu' is probably temporary.

With a $75b valuation, the state-actors coming for their protection money might expect quite a lot of it.

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

#56

Post by moomin »

jasode wrote: post #24
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #9

>35-Year-Old Unknown First of all, that's rude. Second, if they have a $75b valuation and no profit plan, that's not likely a good sign. I doubt China's P2P and venture capital markets are related, but I'd bet they gave a high valuation just to grab headlines. Also, it'll eventually get censored like everything else in China, so 'doing better than Baidu' is probably temporary.

>First of all, that's rude. Real question: Is there some social etiquette rule that says describing a person to a news audience as "unknown" is being rude? Honestly, I've never heard of that. If I created a billion dollar company and Bloomberg called me "an unknown" , I'd consider it a massive compliment. It means that I was able to grow the company totally under the radar without any distracting interview requests f…

My real question is: do they really mean unknown or just “unknown to us”. Guy could be quite well recognised in China for all I know. There’s a lot of implicit parochialism that works its way into news stories.

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

#57

Post by tobltobs »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #9

>35-Year-Old Unknown First of all, that's rude. Second, if they have a $75b valuation and no profit plan, that's not likely a good sign. I doubt China's P2P and venture capital markets are related, but I'd bet they gave a high valuation just to grab headlines. Also, it'll eventually get censored like everything else in China, so 'doing better than Baidu' is probably temporary.

A bit off topic, but isn't you nickname FLUX-YOU a bit rude? Apart from that you are screaming does it sound quite similar to f%&$ you. And to flux means something like "flowing of fluid from the body, such as diarrhea".

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

#58

Post by weberc2 »

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 guess I'm a social robot too because I also don't understand taking offense to this.

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

#59

Post by desireco42 »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #9

>35-Year-Old Unknown First of all, that's rude. Second, if they have a $75b valuation and no profit plan, that's not likely a good sign. I doubt China's P2P and venture capital markets are related, but I'd bet they gave a high valuation just to grab headlines. Also, it'll eventually get censored like everything else in China, so 'doing better than Baidu' is probably temporary.

Absolutely agree. When Kevin Rose came out of the blue with Digg, they didn't call him 'Unknown'. It is just how media in the US (and rest of the world is trying to copy them mostly) tries to grab attention.

Also, it is unknown to them, but Bytedance has been around for quite some time and covered in the US. Also, it is not like they are not making money. So many things are wrong with how they cover this.

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

#60

Post by Nokinside »

rchaud wrote: post #34

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.

If you want to make sense of this. It's better to think like physicist and start from "spherical cow" model.

The asymptotic limit to the whole market is set by people's income.

* Ad revenue will always be small fraction of total income

* All fun, social and leisure activity is fraction of discretionary income.

"Eyballs"/hour is the future source of growth because all societies move towards becoming post-industrial consumer based societies and people spend more time staring at the screen. Tech companies, no matter how tech, produce products and services where the value is increasingly coming from discretionary income and services. There may be several links between the product and the consumer.

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