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

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

#131

Post by yongjik »

mkstowegnv wrote: post #71

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)?

- South Korea has the fortune of understanding the importance of internet "infrastructure", and being a dense country, manages to roll out first-class internet before most other nations.

- Burgeoning domestic services start to take root.

- Government sets up various crazy laws that make doing internet business extremely painful, killing innovation. Large carriers (KT, SKT, LG) exert tight control of the market, killing innovation in the mobile space.

- Only a few giant corporations survive (e.g., Naver and Kakaotalk). When foreign products (Youtube, iPhone, etc.) eventually break into the market, there's no meaningful domestic competitor.

There was a time when everybody had a Cyworld account: you never heard about it, because it was acquired by SKT, and they didn't want it to cannibalize their mobile services. Nobody uses it any more. We all moved to Facebook.

I heard it's somewhat getting better these days.

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

#132

Post by bb2018 »

spanktheuser wrote: post #39
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, th…

The number is still a bit confusing for an outsider though, no?

Twitter is worth 20B. Facebook is worth just five times this and also has Instagram and Whatsapp. Is this worth as much as Instagram which has a huge and wealthy audience?

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

walterbell wrote: post #114
nihonde wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

Any samples available on the open web?

[deleted]

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

#135

Post by che_shirecat »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #127

I downloaded the app and used it for about an hour. Hated it. Uninstalled it. Must be only popular with the younger generation. I thought most of the videos on there were a complete waste of time to watch.

You're obviously not the target market.

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

#136

Post by yorwba »

che_shirecat wrote: post #134
misiti3780 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems weird it does not force redirect to https? https://bytedance.com/products/

Why do they need https for a static page?

It protects the user from content injected by a malicious third party, e.g. their ISP.

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

#137

Post by forkLding »

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?

Its main app isnt musically, its Jinri Toutiao, a news app that has reputedly $2B revenue. TikTok, Musically is just its new acquisitions and ventures. It owns a vast array of video content based sites and apps.

http://bytedance.com/products/

From what it seems, its trying to dominate the new media space in China and Asia through consolidation and acquisitions.

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

#138

Post by paradite »

leetbulb wrote: post #75
paradite wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

It's up! With first post on WeChat's subscription account:

https://paraditedc.com/

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

#139

Post by paradite »

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #108
paradite wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would read that blog. Provided that I get notified of it's existence somehow.

Here it is! With first post on WeChat's subscription account:

https://paraditedc.com/

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

#140

Post by JauntTrooper »

bb2018 wrote: post #132
spanktheuser wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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, th…

The number is still a bit confusing for an outsider though, no? Twitter is worth 20B. Facebook is worth just five times this and also has Instagram and Whatsapp. Is this worth as much as Instagram which has a huge and wealthy audience?

Facebook is worth $475 billion, 22x as much as Twitter.
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