I’ve been telling people about TikTok for a year now, since I live between Asia and the US lately. Most people don’t get it, or understand why it’s so big. The western variant Musical.ly doesn’t help, as the content (which reflects the culture) is different, and not in a good way. The recent efforts to merge the two apps are a huge mistake in my opinion. The beauty of Douyin was the innocent, childish creativity that developed organically there. Merging that Asian thread with a bunch of western brats “flexing” and trying to recreate Vine/Instagram celebrity culture is a bad move.
Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
81–90 of 193 posts
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> $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.
Ads will never go away, ever. They work too well and always will.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#83Here'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…
Abacus launched easier this year, to fill some of that gap:
Though they're still more long-form editorial than "here's what happened this week."
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#84Mostly 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.
1. Korea is much more homogeneous than China. China has a wide diversity of ethnicities. (Before you downvote, check Wikipedia first)
2. China doesn't "ban foreign internet/social media". LinkedIn is in China, so is Bing. It bans companies that do not follow Chinese law. If you want to argue that the Chinese law is bad, you should know that Korea bans Google map because of law.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#85Earlier 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…
I guess the problem is the combination of "35-year-old" with "unknown". Seems the 35yo bit is irrelevant to the story, that's neither old nor young: you can have a significant career by that point and you are a long way from retiring. So I can understand some people from the Valley would think this is just another case of ageism. A bit like saying "A Black Woman left me her seat in the bus" can be suspicious even tho…
Apparently he was 29 anyway, so I'm not sure what the point of the 35 is.
And to be honest Chinese billionaires not being well known in the west isn't that surprising to me, particularly when their business ventures are heavily China-facing.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#86I’ve been telling people about TikTok for a year now, since I live between Asia and the US lately. Most people don’t get it, or understand why it’s so big. The western variant Musical.ly doesn’t help, as the content (which reflects the culture) is different, and not in a good way. The recent efforts to merge the two apps are a huge mistake in my opinion. The beauty of Douyin was the innocent, childish creativity that…
> Most people don’t get it, or understand why it’s so big.
I'll bite. What is it and why it's got so big?
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#87>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.
Or state-actors arrive on behalf of their competitors to put an end to it...
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#88>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.
I'd wear "Unknown" as a badge of honor.
I was going to say the same.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#89>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…
FWIW I have always been under the impression that "first of all that's rude" is mostly used as a funny meme, a recurring harmless little joke (to put emphasis on what comes next in the speech).
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#90>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.
I'd wear "Unknown" as a badge of honor.
Especially with all the trading of personal information these days.
Being unknown to even Google is a huge accomplishment for a 35-yo.