Mostly off topic. Why has China produced most of the serious competition to US software titans? In particular, given that South Korea was way ahead of the rest of the world in cell phone and broadband universality for it's population, why haven't they been the birthplace of any social media or other internet companies that expanded abroad (instead they adopted YouTube and Facebook)?
Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
71–80 of 193 posts
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#72Here'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…
I only know of the company because of PaymoneyWubby, a popular YouTuber who made videos about their Musical.ly/TikTok app that sparked bad press against them and Bytedance tried to censor: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pu3bpqsa7dM
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Every other founder is virtually unknown before they become known. Is he unknown because he lives in China and didn't attend Stanford? What does it mean that he is Unknown ?
>Every other founder is virtually unknown before they become known
Not really. Tesla's founder was well known, for example (as a founder and exiter of another company). Ditto for the founder of NeXT.
And "unknown" here also means not born with a silver spoon, no heir, no previous positions eg. as CEO/CTO somewhere, no major tech connections, etc.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#74This article seems a little misleading... It says in the very beginning
"Back then, the question was how a 29-year-old locally trained software engineer could outsmart the numerous news portals operated by the likes of social media behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd. and extract profit where even Google had failed."
This seems to suggest that he figured out how to make a profit. But then further down it says "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."
So now I'm not sure if it's making a profit or not.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#75Here'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…
Sorry to sound harsh. Maybe it's time to burst out of the English/US bubble and look at what's happening around other parts of the world. Come to think of it, maybe I should start a blog focused on covering tech in China. Edit: To give some context, out of 10 videos that I see on facebook, about 3 of them are "directly taken" from douyin. You can spot them because they have the watermark in Chinese. Granted my social…
I haven't run in to a blog like this, sounds like a good idea! I'd follow it :)
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#76>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?!
First, you're being rude (both for implying the "same person" and for calling them "social robots" because they disagree with you).
No, calling someone an unknown is not by itself treating someone bad. It depends on the context.
If you say it dismissively ("you are an unknown") to imply your superiority then it's bad manners. If you merely inform readers for a fact (that he came from nowhere to create a huge company) then it's not.
>Just use his name in the headline, how hard is that?!
That wouldn't convey the information they need to convey.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every other founder is virtually unknown before they become known. Is he unknown because he lives in China and didn't attend Stanford? What does it mean that he is Unknown ?
> Every other founder is virtually unknown before they become known Not really. Tesla's founder was well known, for example (as a founder and exiter of another company). Ditto for the founder of NeXT. And "unknown" here also means not born with a silver spoon, no heir, no previous positions eg. as CEO/CTO somewhere, no major tech connections, etc.
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Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#78Throwaway account since I'm an old-school news editor but why is it that curated news companies like hvper.com or Techmeme haven't received the same amount of backing? I see more value in targeted + quality than random mishmash of AI-collected headlines.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#79Mostly off topic. Why has China produced most of the serious competition to US software titans? In particular, given that South Korea was way ahead of the rest of the world in cell phone and broadband universality for it's population, why haven't they been the birthplace of any social media or other internet companies that expanded abroad (instead they adopted YouTube and Facebook)?
1) Large, mostly homogeneous nation.
2) Government bans foreign internet/social media services, protecting local companies from foreign competition.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Unknown" is not an insult. It's not rude. It just means that he was not prominent before this company. It's actually somewhat of a compliment, because you generally expect gradual rises in fame and performance, not meteoric ones. So to say " unknown X does great thing Y" is more complimentary to X than saying "X does great thing Y".
whose definition of 'prominent' ? many, many assumptions there
You could say that for any word. The common people's definition of prominent. In the sense that he wasn't that known in the tech world and not a household item in the business industry either.