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TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

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Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#121

Post by throwaway122378 »

jariel wrote: post #46
enitihas wrote: post #23

What happens if Chinese big tech starts dominating the world? Since the US no longer dominates manufacturing, if the US starts losing in services too, what advantage will the US ever have on China?

This is an excellent question, but more pertinent is the fact that these companies are state-sponsored, state-backed. The CCP/China views these apps as a serious tool of foreign policy and economic expansion, influence and control. Imagine if Trump had meetings with Apple CEO and was subsidizing their product, creating worker legislation for them, directing/requiring banks to fund them, using the foreign service to h…

> It's a serious issue that 'old economy' Trump is nowhere close to understanding.

Politics aside Trump is the first US President to stand up to China.

The question is will US corporations do the same?

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#122

Post by BurningFrog »

holler wrote: post #57
coralreef wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook solved the core problem of real identity on the web. Extending outside colleges was a natural progression (first to workplaces, then to high schools, then publicly). TikTok solves the problem of short form video creation / entertainment. Will their userbase be interested in creating the same type of content in 4-5 years? I think they'll struggle the same way Snapchat struggles to convince people over 35 to u…

> I think they'll struggle the same way Snapchat struggles to convince people over 35 to use their app. Have you used TikTok lately? It's overwhelmed with millennial/elder millennial and beyond. I don't see this as a problem for them and in fact I think people are jumping over to it in droves.

Everyone is locked up at home with their phone at the moment.

So current TikTok trends may be atypical.

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#123

Post by toohotatopic »

mrdrozdov wrote: post #112

As others have mentioned, this hacker news headline is deceptive. The valuation is with respect to ByteDance, which has a business suite beyond TikTok. Even the article headline mentions this: "TikTok Owner’s Value Exceeds $100 Billion in Private Markets" There are other facts about ByteDance such as having nearly 100k employees and a moderately size AI research lab that makes this news less surprising.

>moderately size AI research lab

Isn't their AI lab actually quite good? If I remember correctly, they create personalized news stories that are actually read and consumed.

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#124

Post by chvid »

georgespencer wrote: post #85
FanaHOVA wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ByteDance isn't just TikTok, which is what the headline doesn't include. They also own Toutiao (Chinese news/content platform, top 100 website in China), Helo (Indian social media, the Google Play app alone has 2.2M reviews), Lark ( https://www.larksuite.com/ , an enterprise collaboration platform aimed at the Japanese market).

ByteDance did $20bn of revenue in 2019. The comments in this thread are… wow. Lots of opinions from my favourite HN cameo character, "Person With Vitally Important Opinions About Complex Topic But No Time To Read Beyond The Headline."

Given that Facebook has a market cap of 650 B the valuation sounds reasonable ... maybe even cheap.

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#126

Post by walterbell »

echelon wrote: post #103
goodside wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s less horrifying if you think of it as a treadmill — MySpace is sort of the logical extreme, where the owners realized its days were numbered and made the experience so ad-heavy that everyone left for other platforms. You sow growth for some number of years, then you reap. Sometimes it’s subscriptions, sometimes it’s sponsored full-page branding.

Sorry, I wasn't making the claim about a product. People that are more socially valuable are given a better experience and are treated better; kind of the social media "red carpet" treatment. Those that are less valuable are mined and exploited. I can imagine an insidious future where social networks assign an "intelligence score" to users and advertise snake oil to those with less capacity to evaluate risks. There m…

What makes you think this hasn't already happened? Advertising can both create and meet demand. A large portion of social media advertising came from mobile gaming companies, relying on the targeted profiles available on social platform, to find people who could be converted into whales.

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#127

Post by Jagat »

ngokevin wrote: post #107
chrischen wrote: post #80

Social media in the US was always something I thought that Chinese companies couldn't penetrate due to cultural differences. The fact that they have means so many more US tech businesses are potentially at risk, because China's tech sector is extremely strong on the software side, even on the open source side (Ant design for react, Vue js). This is despite relatively high anti-China sentiments: see Koa-router being t…

Maybe this isn't a substantive comment, but I think China understands America more than the other way around.

Thanks to Hollywood, American TV shows, and the Internet being predominantly US/English dominated, every country understands America more than the other way round.

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#128

Post by mrdrozdov »

toohotatopic wrote: post #123
mrdrozdov wrote: post #112

As others have mentioned, this hacker news headline is deceptive. The valuation is with respect to ByteDance, which has a business suite beyond TikTok. Even the article headline mentions this: "TikTok Owner’s Value Exceeds $100 Billion in Private Markets" There are other facts about ByteDance such as having nearly 100k employees and a moderately size AI research lab that makes this news less surprising.

>moderately size AI research lab Isn't their AI lab actually quite good? If I remember correctly, they create personalized news stories that are actually read and consumed.

It isn't an ultimate metric, but they have 150+ papers listed on google scholar, which is not a small amount. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=byt...

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#129

Post by dragonwriter »

holler wrote: post #57
coralreef wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook solved the core problem of real identity on the web. Extending outside colleges was a natural progression (first to workplaces, then to high schools, then publicly). TikTok solves the problem of short form video creation / entertainment. Will their userbase be interested in creating the same type of content in 4-5 years? I think they'll struggle the same way Snapchat struggles to convince people over 35 to u…

> I think they'll struggle the same way Snapchat struggles to convince people over 35 to use their app. Have you used TikTok lately? It's overwhelmed with millennial/elder millennial and beyond. I don't see this as a problem for them and in fact I think people are jumping over to it in droves.

> millennial/elder millennia

Is this redundant or is the latter the new term for Gen X from the people who believe that the world is divided between Boomers and Millennials, so everyone else must be a “young millenial”, “elder millenial”, or “advanced boomer”?

Re: TikTok has recently traded at valuations of $105-110B on private markets

#130

Post by [deleted] »

georgespencer wrote: post #85
FanaHOVA wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ByteDance isn't just TikTok, which is what the headline doesn't include. They also own Toutiao (Chinese news/content platform, top 100 website in China), Helo (Indian social media, the Google Play app alone has 2.2M reviews), Lark ( https://www.larksuite.com/ , an enterprise collaboration platform aimed at the Japanese market).

ByteDance did $20bn of revenue in 2019. The comments in this thread are… wow. Lots of opinions from my favourite HN cameo character, "Person With Vitally Important Opinions About Complex Topic But No Time To Read Beyond The Headline."

[deleted]
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