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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

#161

Post by justicezyx »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #118
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?

Not a fan of the company, but they are much more than musical.ly. - Toutiao, the content farm (think Buzzfeed++), a pivot from the original news aggregator model. It has 120M DAU as of last October, per YC's report [1]. - Douyin, or Tik Tok, the short video platform, a pivot from originally a copycat of Musical.ly (ironically). It has 150M DAU [2]. - Dailyhunt, Toutiao for the India market. - Musical.ly, an acquisiti…

> it is dangerously addictive.

This is the part I feel quite sad for them.

Yes, they break out the iron grips of Tencent, but look at what they did.

It paints a painfully-clear image of China's Internet market: Race to bottom, not only in market poly, but also in the actual content.

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

#162

Post by forkLding »

A lot of commenters are arbitrarily commmenting without reading the article, Musically and Tiktok is really a new venture + acquisition for ByteDance, its not their main business but something they're trying out and trying to grow for the future. They're more a corporate group or a consolidating conglomerate of new media startups.

Their main business is Jinri Toutiao, a news aggregation + content site powered by ML recommendations that is very popular in China at ~120MM DAU and revenue targets of ~7.5B overall for the whole corporate group. Otherwise they have quite a bit of other popular video content and streaming sites based in China and Asia.

Sources: http://bytedance.com/products

https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2122432/chinas-b...

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

#163

Post by lovich »

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)

How is that site not shut down? The guy in the video was correct. If you had any one of those clips on your computer alone, you'd be going to jail. Now that a company has figured out a way to monetize it, they can do it at scale?

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

#164

Post by htormey »

trhway wrote: post #144
JauntTrooper wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

FB has 1.5B DAU, Twitter - ~150M DAU. Bytedance has ~200M DAU, and about the same revenue as Twitter. So, Bytedance DAU is valued as an FB DAU - probably reflects expectations that it can get to the FB level (ie. 3x) of per-user revenue extraction and not ends up like Twitter/Snap.

Where are the bulk of their users based? I assume China right? Surely the ARPU in China is way less than the USA where FB/Snap/goog/twtr own most of the market.

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

#165

Post by forkLding »

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)?

Because Korea never protected its internet/software industries or never adopted an infant industry argument for their software, they chose instead to consolidate and protect the powers of chaebols who focused on hardware applications and those industries that it was already good at because they were already making money and likely to do so in the future.

Moreover, the chaebols probably out-competed and bought out any software competitors in their protected status.

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

#166

Post by forkLding »

jnbiche wrote: post #100
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)?

> 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.

Chinese protectionism wasn't bad in the first place, Americans adopted the infant industry argument articulated by Alexander Hamilton and American tariffs were highest in the world from 1816 through 1945, other countries are just now adopting whats working from the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_industry_argument

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

#168

Post by sorenjan »

qubax wrote: post #156
sorenjan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see how it's worth close to $800 million either. Besides the icky sexualized content, isn't ads to kids illegal in most countries? How are you going to monetize that market? And even if it's legal, how moral is it?

> I can't see how it's worth close to $800 million either. It's worth $800 million because someone was willing to buy it for $800 million. Why is anything worth anything? Because someone is willing to pay for it. > isn't ads to kids illegal in most countries? What? Then how does nickelodean, toys stores, kids clothes store, etc exist? I can assure you that ads to kids are most definitely legal in most countries. We h…

> It's worth $800 million because someone was willing to buy it for $800 million.

Obviously I meant that I can't see how they'd get $800 million of value from their purchase. Thank you for your lesson in market value though.

> What's immoral about it?

Children aren't equipped to separate fiction from reality, so they aren't as critical about what they're told as adults are. Plus they rarely have much money of their own, so advertisers use the children's "pester power" [0] to get the parents to buy stuff.

> You sound like people saying kids shouldn't be taught about sex education, learn about violent news, etc.

No I don't. That's learning about real life issues to equip you for the future. Ads are people trying to take advantage of you for their own profit. Don't compare commercials with information.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pester_power

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_to_children

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

#169

Post by ec109685 »

newsjunkie2k wrote: post #78

Throwaway 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.

Because their engagement numbers don’t compare with the AI based ones.

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

#170

Post by person_of_color »

bigbang wrote: post #149
emptybits wrote: post #45

ByteDance also made news for "highest salaries in the world" and "unlimited salary for unlimited talent". $1M USD salaries plus options. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-24/in-battle...

"ByteDance’s top earners make more than $1 million a year plus stock options, with total compensation sometimes exceeding $3 million. " I bet top earners at Google, Facebook etc make much more than this.

Can't make this assertion without seeing a distribution.
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