ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by mikeg8 » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

nnm wrote: 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.

The space will get stale, people move on, trends change. Snap generated 1.7B in revenue FY2019. People were hyping it up the same way years ago.

IG made 20B in 2019, but it's revenue strategy may not work for Tik Tok's demographic. I'd like to see them capitalize a little more before claiming they should be worth 300B.

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

#182

Post by dpedu » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 11:52 PM UTC

soulofmischief wrote: post #150

philosopher1234 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you disagree?

You're sampling a 10-year span according to your argument. That's not enough time to ascertain if this is a bubble. I'd hold off on making assertive comments about the trajectory of Silicon Valley for now.

That's 1/3rd of the time the Web itself has existed.

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

#183

Post by paulpan » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:23 AM UTC

fokinsean wrote: post #131

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…

> due to geopolitical factors They kind of dug themselves in hole with how sketchy the app is

There's been some vulnerabilities exposed but I think overall "sketchy" can be subjective. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-ban-us-national-security-...

A recent example is the app was caught reading the user clipboard in iOS 14 beta but a lot of other apps were also caught red handed. The oft-cited national security risk about ByteDance providing user info to Chinese government is a bit overblown, when the NSA has been spying on its own citizens for years...

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

#184

Post by _6fmb » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:27 AM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #169

_6fmb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I haven't installed TikTok, so I'll ask you instead. If there's no follow model, how do I see stuff that I want to see? Say there's a particular guy I like, I want to see a bunch of his content. Do I have to like it and hope the algo gives me more?

The follow mode is secondary as others said. But aside from that it figures out what stuff you like by tracking things like time spent on videos and dozens of other micro creative analytics that I'm sure would piss off privacy advocates. The end result is a very fine tuned recommendations algorithm that's really adept on its task.

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

#185

Post by fiblye » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

hellomyguys wrote: post #70

mschuster91 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially for younger people who are tired of the social behavior that's formed on IG. Eternal September: what has happened to Instagram will also happen to TikTok. Additionally there is the very real risk that TikTok will be seen by governments as what it is: Chinese spyware. India has already banned it, I hope that the rest of the world follows suit.

>Additionally there is the very real risk that TikTok will be seen by governments as what it is: Chinese spyware. India has already banned it, I hope that the rest of the world follows suit. Well that's why the investors are trying to take it over. >Eternal September: what has happened to Instagram will also happen to TikTok. Definitely agree this is always a concern, but the type of content that is rewarded on TikTo…

> the type of content that is rewarded on TikTok makes it less exploitable by people who build followings by posting low-effort content that looks good aesthetically

Forgive me for not being completely in the know, but everything I've seen about TikTok leads me to believe that it's primarily low effort content.

In five years, everyone will be complaining about how TikTok is boring and worthless, but The Next Over"valued" App is going to shake things up and award good content.

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

#186

Post by Baeocystin » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

borg_ wrote: post #176

fokinsean wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> due to geopolitical factors They kind of dug themselves in hole with how sketchy the app is

and how sketchy exactly is it?

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/tiktok-seems-to-b...

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

#187

Post by thephyber » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

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…

> Is there any real reason why Tesla should be worth more than the rest of the US auto industry combined?

I think this is like asking "Should Amazon be worth more than all e-tailers combined?" circa 2009. Both of their businesses are growing in tangential directions to their core business. In just about 5 years, AWS turned from some "nice supplemental income" to becoming the company's new core product.

The Tesla bulls are betting that Tesla's energy collection and storage products will grow to eclipse their car business and take advantage of the economy of scale of the GigaFactories. The bears are only looking at Tesla as a niche car company.

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

#188

Post by samtheprogram » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

yroc92 wrote: post #170

devmunchies wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen or heard about anyone using snapchat in the last year. It used to be the location for all my family's chat. They definitely aren't experiencing explosive growth anymore.

It’s very popular amongst younger people.

As someone in their mid-twenties, I can confirm. Since a lot of users don't have iPhone's/iMessage, and/or just don't use Facebook/Messenger that much, it's become a go-to messaging platform for those that don't seek out the more dedicated ones like Whatsapp, at least in my non-technical circles. I'm in several group chats that all organically cultivated on Snapchat in the past couple years.

Besides that, they've built out their first-party content platform pretty well, which I assume is what's driving their advertising growth, and (anecdotally) is shared in-app relatively frequently, although I've recognized some reposting/reformatting of said video content from Youtube or other sources, e.g. WatchMojo.

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

#189

Post by askafriend » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 2:26 AM UTC

cosmodisk wrote: post #168

askafriend wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when that doesn't happen, you'll come up with your next theory. The goal posts will keep moving until one day you'll run out of things to say and the company is a behemoth capturing a percentage of all car sales (not just electric). That's been the dynamic with Tesla since the company was started.

Personally I couldn't care less whether they succeed or not. I'm not blind either and I'm fully aware how big a flame they put under the industry's ass and how everyone started working on similar projects. All that aside, I still think that they will be facing huge competition from other manufacturers once they are fully on board with electric models. Who knows, maybe Tesla will drive fast enough and will be no.1 man…

I don't disagree with anything you said there! In fact I agree with your measured take. I only wanted to push back against this part from your original comment:

> At that point Tesla may become no more than Dachia or Kia.

The future is already here, and it requires these old car companies (Ford, GM, etc) to not only become electric car companies, but also become computer hardware and software companies. Many many manufacturers will fold in the coming years or be absorbed by larger conglomerates because they simply won't be able to compete on these vectors.

The advantages/efficiencies these old car companies have spent decades building are being rendered irrelevant. And that's the real problem for them. The risk isn't that they can't compete, the risk is that whatever they put out is irrelevant. Think iPhone v. Blackberry.

It's not just about making a new type of car. It's about building a new kind of company entirely.

The worst case scenario is Tesla gets acquired for a godly sum of money - not that it goes under or becomes the next Kia. Tesla's battery production capacity very well makes the company one of national strategic interest.

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

#190

Post by pankajdoharey » Thu, Jul 30, 2020, 3:42 AM UTC

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.

Ofcourse Platform companies are overvalued. There is no real tech here just user content they are trying to monetize.

Infact I would go ahead and say real tech was under valued look at Sun Microsystems, A company that Developed its own Processor (Sparc) , Its own OS (Solaris) , Its own Database (Mysql) , Its own VM (Virtual Box) , Its own Language and Development Platform (Java), Its own Development IDE (Netbeans) every one of those products is real technology and a leader in its own category.

And yet the company was sold at 1 Billion USD, which seemed like short change.