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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

#151

Post by solatic »

devmunchies wrote: post #126
chvid wrote: post #17

This is from Twitter and might be a hyperbole or conspiracy: Overheard on current US war on Tiktok. A thread: Talks abt ban on Tiktok subsiding a bit because Tiktok in talks with General Atlantic and Sequoia to sell to a US shell company. US demanding that Tiktok technical staff be completely changed, AI algorithm be based in the US... Continued at https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1288284750273114112

> US demanding that Tiktok technical staff be completely changed, AI algorithm be based in the US plot twist, HQ moved to Israel and entire company becomes un-critique-able

You joke, but when it comes to the US-China Cold War, Israel is practically Switzerland. Lots of economic alignment both ways, lots of investment both ways, lots of flights (pre-Covid) to each, geographically far outside of each other's regional geography.

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

#152

Post by devmunchies »

solatic wrote: post #151
devmunchies wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US demanding that Tiktok technical staff be completely changed, AI algorithm be based in the US plot twist, HQ moved to Israel and entire company becomes un-critique-able

You joke, but when it comes to the US-China Cold War, Israel is practically Switzerland. Lots of economic alignment both ways, lots of investment both ways, lots of flights (pre-Covid) to each, geographically far outside of each other's regional geography.

yeah i get that. the joke is that despite playing both sides, many still view them as our "greatest ally" and would never question them.

Nothing against Israel, they're smart to hedge their bets.

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

#154

Post by viscanti »

freehunter wrote: post #149
paulpauper wrote: post #53

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…

A bear would say those pundits have been wrong so far and will eventually be proven right. Is there any real reason why Tesla should be worth more than the rest of the US auto industry combined? Can Uber ever actually turn enough profit to justify their valuation? At what point does Amazon stop growing and their PE ratio start mattering? Right now investors seem to believe that these companies have a very bright futu…

Sure. If valuations continue to go up forever, at some point they're over valued. The point was that those predictions have been silly in retrospect.

DHH had a widely shared post where he said FB wasn't worth $33B+ and it could never be. He was clearly wrong (off by an order of magnitude). Eventually there will be some overvalued companies (WeWork before the valuation plummeted might be a good example). But given how many bear predictions have turned out to be really wrong, it's good to be skeptical of similar arguments going forward (they won't always been wrong, but some have been spectacularly wrong).

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

#155

Post by stunt »

alehul wrote: post #14

Many are suggesting that TikTok would be overvalued at $50B. If that's the case, do you believe FB is overvalued at $662B? Instagram, as of 2018, was estimated to be worth around $100B on its own (with about 1b MAUs, versus TikTok's 800m). TikTok seems at least equally addictive, and its algorithm does a fantastic job at quickly showing good content that matches your interests.

> algorithm does a fantastic job at quickly showing good content that matches your interests.

Well you really don't have to do a lot to have better content than Instagram.

I'm glad TikTok could prove that social network users including very young generation can produce better content. Otherwise, Facebook was going to brain damage half of the earth population with the type of culture they are promoting for profit. And everybody was going to blame generation for it instead of the world that we designed for them.

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

#156

Post by neximo64 »

I think this is extraordinarily cruel & I can see lots on these comments where people agree but are divided (probably the ones who disagree are from the US)

As someone who grew up outside the US or a western country I don't really see anything wrong with TikTok. If they do something Facebook or Google or your runt of the litter tracking script will do it. I am also not brought up in China or a country involved in this dispute so feel I have a neutral view.

What I see as torturously unfair that this founder made a great startup and app that people do enjoy to consume. Because it simply isn't from a western country he must be bought out at some crappy valuation (which he probably doesnt even want to do) simply because this is the first foreign tech company to do well in the US that isn't from a western country.

If this happens where TikTok is banned/has to sell, etc. I would feel it completely reasonable that India, Africa, China, some small Eastern European country, SE Asia forces a US company to sell down its local operations at a price they dictate to a local business.

WhatsApp for example should be forced to sell its Indian operations to Reliance Industries. Don't any of you think that sounds rather unfair to Facebook?

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

#157

Post by rattray »

patrickaljord wrote: post #127
rattray wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal experience, Instagram ads are shockingly good (they often hit me with something that I actually want) and Tiktok ads shockingly bad (I've never seen one I didn't swipe through immediately). Obviously Tiktok and their advertisers will be doing a lot of work on this, and they've only just begun, but I really wonder about the efficacy of the medium for ads. It seems like a much more difficult forum for th…

Instagram ads are better but TikTok is way more entertaining to me. I almost always get a chuckle or even a laugh every time I use TikTok, last time I opened Instagram all I got was boring food pictures, pictures of dogs and a friend's family picture...

I agree completely – and I wonder if it's part of the problem. If an advertiser on TikTok doesn't entertain me, I'm swiping. Whereas on Instagram, I'm more willing to look at some pants or whatever for a second – it's not that much less interesting than the competition (baby pics).

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

#158

Post by hakka-nyu-su »

enumjorge wrote: post #148
paulpan wrote: post #117

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…

On the other hand I think it’s good for governments to face the consequences of their actions. If the Chinese government wants to treat technology as a surveillance mechanism, they shouldn’t be surprised when other countries want to avoid Chinese apps. Similarly, after revelations that the US government was messing with American companies, we lost business in places like Europe. It is unfortunate that there’s less di…

The comparison doesn't seem proportional at all. American tech companies were not forced to sell their technology to European investors in order to avoid their apps being banned in Europe. They were just fined.

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

#159

Post by nemothekid »

paulpan wrote: post #117

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…

What I also find interesting is that ByteDance is the only Chinese company to become "popular" in the West for a long time (Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent are all years old now), and I wonder how this moves affects them at home.

Stateside, I'm discouraged to see it's VC firms making bids (according to the article), as then it may become a play on how to flip this to Facebook as they are the only ones actually monetizing social media.

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

#160

Post by luckylion »

cambalache wrote: post #118

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 product…

There's a documentary People's Republic of Desire that I recommend to anyone who thinks China is pretty behind on tech and basically just a manufacturing giant. They're not. Social Streaming on Twitch for cheers & donations? Yeah, they've been doing it for years on their own platform.

I'm not surprised at all that they find international success. Any very large domestic market will create viral products and give their makers enough money and reach to go global.

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