2017 tag
Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
91–100 of 193 posts
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#92Earlier 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.
Maybe they intended to write
>Virtually Every other founder is unknown before they become known
.. :)
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#93Earlier 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…
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).
But... Was he a known-unknown or an unknown-unknown?
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#94This 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…
I don't think that first sentence implies anything about a profit...
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They go away eventually on open platforms, because blocking. That's why lots of firms push closed platforms. That's why humans should use open platforms.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#96I’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?
It’s an app for sharing short audiovisual clips and it’s huge because it developed in a culture of good-natured, one-upsmanship that is suited to a broad audience of Asian youth (including China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, South Asia, etc.), and in turn was fueled by adaptive feeds based on user behavior and feedback. I liked it because the content was friendly, accessible, and creative. I assume others felt the same way.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#97Seems exactly, somewhat, afaict, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prismatic_(app)
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#98>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?!
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18093989.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#99I feel like I've been living under a rock. I've never heard of Bytedance. Is it mostly unknown in the western world?
You have been living under a rock, although it’s not your fault. There is depressingly little information exchanged between east and west, other than reports on fringe stuff that emphasizes our otherness. If you knew anyone under age 20 living in nearly any Asian country (maybe India, Pakistan, Bangladesh excluded), they could tell you about Douyin/TikTok.
Re: Bytedance said to be valued at over $75B in new round
#100Mostly 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)?
> Why has China produced most of the serious competition to US software titans?
In a word, Chinese protectionism. However, given how our software titans are dominating our society, I'm not sure it's a bad thing that competitors have emerged, even if it was from the cradle of market manipulation.