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ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

reuters.com

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

#111

Post by fragmede »

paulpauper wrote: post #64
reaperducer wrote: post #60

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…

Casually lumping all pundits together as if they talk with a single voice is as claiming HN commenters all speak with a single voice.

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

#112

Post by Firebrand »

kozhevnikov wrote: post #85
Firebrand wrote: post #51

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.

Maybe not a major flop, but Facebook’s original TikTok competitor, Lasso, was shut down. They tried to go after the Musical.ly half of TikTok’s user base that likes dancing to music.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/lasso-facebook-tiktok-shut...

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

#114

Post by krustyburger »

cosmodisk wrote: post #107
paulpauper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The narrative from Tesla bears continues to shift into the future as it outperforms their predictions. Wasn’t the company supposed to have been sidelined many times by now?

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

#115

Post by cambalache »

14 wrote: post #39
snazz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What fate are you referring to with Snapchat? I’m pretty close to the target audience for both Snapchat and TikTok and nearly everyone I know (edit: close to my age) uses both.

What is the age group they target? I am not 40 and don’t know a single person with snap anymore. None of my kids or their friends so is it like 15-25 year olds or who uses snap now days? Thanks

You are really out of touch with your kids and their friends then.It happens.

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

#116

Post by _6fmb »

scott31 wrote: post #105
_6fmb wrote: 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?

Disingenuous silliness to compare TikTok to a "shitty app". I googled and found this page (not sure how correct it is). https://wallaroomedia.com/blog/social-media/tiktok-statistic...

USA 20 Million MAU in 2018, estimated 70 million in 2020?

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

#117

Post by paulpan »

It's sort to sad to see TikTok being forcibly sold off due to geopolitical factors, rather than on more business ones (e.g. competitiveness).

Despite the controversy with its personal data leakage, TikTok has been massively successful and put the established players like Facebook, Twitter and even YouTube on alert. Competition forces companies to improve and just as we need Android to hold iOS accountable, etc TikTok is a good counterbalance to Facebook.

Another dimension is that the tech space is either dominated by U.S. companies or regionally segmented (e.g. Whatsapp in Europe, Wechat in China). TikTok was exciting as a non-U.S. product that grew viral globally. If ByteDance is forced to sell to a U.S. company, then it's back to the status quo.

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

#118

Post by cambalache »

No matter what the future may bring for TikTok, it has surprised me because it definitely showed that the Chinese are coming with their unicorns and coming hard. I was expecting something like that but in a decade or so. You can argue that is not that technically advanced and slightly derivative, but its explosive growth, smart user engagement tactics, polished presentation (a constant weak point with Chinese products) is nothing short of amazing.

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

#119

Post by diag »

_6fmb wrote: post #98
whymauri wrote: post #91

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…

Youtube does a pretty good job of recommending new content though.

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

#120

Post by oh_sigh »

andreilys wrote: post #90
eunos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI and tech team evaluated by NSA Suppose that PRC considers to open the GFW but with the same requirements (AI and tech team evaluated by MSS). Would that be acceptable?

They would never open the GFW because it would be a threat to their governance model.

Using proxy servers is quite common in China, to the point where internet cafes used to have instructions on how to do so.

I wonder what percent of people are actually stymied by the gfw, versus minorly annoyed

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