Live data from Hacker News

ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

reuters.com

101–110 of 204 posts

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been reported Facebook has been offering exclusivity contracts to some of TikTok’s most followed personalities for its new competitor, Reels. It reminds me of Microsoft’s streaming platform giving millions to Ninja and Shroud only to close it down months later. TikTok has been very good at focusing on new content discovery first when you open the app, making you swipe left to see the people you follow second—thi…

Have there been any major Facebook flops? They seem to be very successful in acquiring (WhatsApp, Instagram) and diversifying (Facebook Messenger, Instagram Stories) the next social thing. They are no Yahoo or, on occasion, Microsoft.

Facebook are smart. They are well aware of the changes in the social network sphere and the fact that pretty much every single platform at some point starts loosing customer base because they move on to the new ones. So as long as Facebook keeps buying the ones whilst pulling billions in progress, they are fine.

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#102
post #89

There is limited eye time. TikTok is on the path to winner-takes-all in the space it is currently in. I would value it at $300B given its huge potential that none of its competitors or copiers can have. $50B is low imo -- likely caused by the political pressure.

What is stopping TikTok from getting flavor-of-the-month'd as teenagers and young adults move to newer platforms? Edit: this is a genuine question I do not have an answer for and I'd like to hear some takes.

The newer platforms will need to offer something different or there's no point in moving and it will likely take some years perhaps 4-5 before that new thing becomes apparent, in the meantime TikTok will be the new hot thing.

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#103
post #63

Contrary to what I am realizing is a common misconception in this thread that $SNAP is struggling, it is actually doing very well.

It’s still well below the IPO price in 2017, with net loss growing to $326 million, up from $255 million last year and EBITDA of almost -$1 billion. Perhaps our definitions of doing well are different. Sure DAU is up, but we all know those metrics are inflated BS and monetization is all that really matters. It’s been 3 years since IPO and they’re still making a heavy loss.

IPO price was $17. Current price is almost $23.

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#105
post #94

Way undervalued. One chart to explain why the US is doing this: https://imgur.com/a/PnmijVz

Your graph does not tell anything about absolute values. My shitty app has grown 400% in that timeframe, by your metric it should be values at least 200$ billion?

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#106
post #26

If you look at the graphs in this article on the use and explosive popularity of TikTok you can see that TiKTok currently dwarfs all other social media in the US market wrt. downloads, time spent in app pr user, user growth. https://www.ft.com/content/c6a8b9bc-dd6d-46a7-b008-825568982... TikTok’s rampant growth strikes wrong note with US

Or, if they allegations are true, you could look at this as "rampant growth in data harvesting".

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that is only true if you only look at the successes, such as those you’ve illustrated. For every pundit-bashed unicorn, there are tens of thousands of times the pundits got it right.

look at all the articles since 2010 or so about Amazon and Tesla being bubbles. Or before that, articles in 2007-2010 about Facebook being Myspace. Or about Uber dying due to debt (this was in 2014-2016). These are the companies pundits write the most about ,and have been wrong. Yeah, many unicorns do fail or get acquired for sub-billion, but pundits seldom if ever write about them, except when they fail. The media w…

Tesla will carry on for the next few years,until all the major manufacturers will get to the point,where making electric becomes a new norm. At that point Tesla may become no more than Dachia or Kia.

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#108
post #80
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a good deal. I will ask my higher ups.

That is a terrible deal, because it amounts to letting them clone your technology in depth. On the other hand, until the US kicked over the table, the UK had a national security oversight centre for Huawei where people with UK security clearances performed code review ..

Yeah but they don't pretend that it is foolproof. It's the typical government "we have to do something" answer to a fundamental problem. Software defined networks are not secure from state level interference and everybody in tech that is honest knows it. And since they are not secure, and not easily monitored with strong encryption they're the perfect delivery vector for targeted malware. I wish we had the political will in the liberal alliance to say no to networking gear originating from countries like China.

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#109
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is stopping TikTok from getting flavor-of-the-month'd as teenagers and young adults move to newer platforms? Edit: this is a genuine question I do not have an answer for and I'd like to hear some takes.

As said in some other comments, TikTok does not use a "follow" model, new content is algorithmically recommended to you. Therefore there is no problem with the content creators you're following burning out or your follow list getting stale. For example my highschool friends are no longer that active on facebook, and in 2020 I'm no longer asking random people to add me to FB, therefore facebook is now kind of dead to…

Gotcha - is this where Vine fell apart? By relying too heavily on follows?

Re: ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, give how wrong over the past decade pundits have been about Tesla, Uber, Facebook, Shopify, Amazon (and many others), I am inclined to discount/ignore any prediction of a rapidly-growing consumer tech or app company being a bubble. These pundits have a horrible track record of predicting this sort of stuff. A common thread for why these forecasts tend to be so bad is, such pundits ignore the growth of…

All of that is only true if you only look at the successes, such as those you’ve illustrated. For every pundit-bashed unicorn, there are tens of thousands of times the pundits got it right.

What is the last app with 800mm users for which the pundits correctly predicted its demise?
Post reply on HN