ByteDance

ByteDance Ltd. (Chinese: 字节跳动; pinyin: Zìjié Tiàodòng) is a Chinese multinational internet technology company headquartered in Beijing.[3][4] It was founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012. ByteDance is reportedly worth over US$100 billion as of May 2020.[5]

Not to be confused with Byte (service).
ByteDance Ltd.
Native name
字节跳动有限公司
Privately held company
IndustryInternet
FoundedMarch 2012 (2012-03)
FounderZhang Yiming
Headquarters
Haidian District, Beijing
,
China
(global operation headquarters)
Cayman Islands[1]
(legal domicile)
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Zhang Yiming, Chairman & CEO
Kevin A. Mayer, COO
Lidong Zhang, Chairman of ByteDance China
Nan Zhang, CEO of ByteDance China
Fuping Zhang, Communist Party Committee Secretary of ByteDance
ProductsToutiao
TikTok / Douyin
BuzzVideo
Vigo Video
Helo
Revenue CN¥140 billion (US$20 billion, 2019)[2]
Websitewww.bytedance.com

ByteDance's core product, Toutiao ("Headlines"), is a content platform in China and around the world.[6][7] Toutiao started out as a news recommendation engine and gradually evolved into a platform delivering content in various formats, such as texts, images, question-and-answer posts, microblogs, and videos.

ByteDance is the developer of the video-sharing social networking service Douyin (TikTok). On November 9, 2017, ByteDance acquired social media start-up Musical.ly for up to US$1 billion. They combined it with TikTok on August 2, 2018 into a single global application, keeping the TikTok name.

As of November 2018, ByteDance had over 800 million daily active users (over 1 billion accumulated users) across all of its content platforms.[8][9] The company was valued at $78 billion and is considered one of the most valuable unicorns in the world.[10] The company has an internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party as well as strategic partnerships with the Ministry of Public Security and Chinese Communist Party-supported ventures in Beijing and Shanghai.[11][12][13][14] ByteDance is backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group.[15] It has garnered public attention over allegations that it worked with the Chinese Communist Party to censor and surveil content pertaining to Xinjiang re-education camps and other topics the Party deemed controversial.[16][17][18]

On 19 May 2020, ByteDance and Disney released an announcement that Kevin Mayer, head of Disney's streaming business, would join ByteDance. Since 1 June 2020, Mayer has been serving as the CEO of TikTok and the COO of ByteDance, reporting directly to the company CEO Zhang Yiming.[19]

On 3 August 2020, U.S. president Donald Trump set September 15 as the deadline for TikTok, a social media app under ByteDance, to find a US buyer, and he then issued executive orders that he would ban TikTok[20] from operating in the country if it's not sold by ByteDance within 45 days.[21] Then at 12:40 PM of August 3, Beijing local time, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming sent out an all-staff letter in response to the potential sale of TikTok's US operations.[22]

On 7 August 2020, ByteDance released a statement in response to the executive order banning US companies and individuals from doing business with it, threatening to resort to the American justice system in order to get "fair treatment."[23][24] On 14 August 2020, Trump issued an executive order mandating that ByteDance divest from all U.S. operations of TikTok within 90 days.[25]

Products

Neihan Duanzi

In March 2012, ByteDance launched its first app called Neihan Duanzi (内涵段子). This app allowed users to circulate jokes, memes, and humorous videos. At its peak, Neihan Duanzi had over 200 million users in 2017.[26]

On 10 April 2018, ByteDance permanently sunsetted Neihan Duanzi, as the National Radio and Television Administration accused Neihan Duanzi of hosting "vulgar" and "improper" content and "triggering strong sentiments of resentment among internet users".[27] In response to Neihan Duanzi's shutdown, founder Zhang Yiming issued a letter stating that the app was "incommensurate with socialist core values" and promised that ByteDance would "further deepen cooperation" with the authorities to promote their policies.[28][29] Following the shutdown, ByteDance announced that it would give preference to Chinese Communist Party members in its hiring and increase its censors from 6,000 to 10,000 employees.[30][31][32]

Toutiao
Main article: Toutiao

The first version of Toutiao was launched in August 2012,[33] five months after Zhang founded ByteDance. Toutiao hit 1 million daily active users four months after its launch.[34]

In January 2014, the company created the "Toutiaohao" (头条号) platform to attract more PGC (professionally generated content) and UGC (user generated content) creators; and later in the year, added video capabilities. Toutiao used interest-based and decentralized distribution to help long-tail content creators find an audience. An often cited example is "Zhuguan Baba" (猪倌巴巴), a young pig farmer in Northern China whose posts on how to raise pigs attracted millions of readers on Toutiao.[35][36]

In February 2016, a missing person alerts project was started on the Toutiao platform. As of June 2020, the alerts have helped find 13,116 missing persons.[37][38]

In August 2019, Bytedance launches Toutiao Search as a part of its Toutiao portal – a news aggregator.[39]

Xigua Video

In March 2016, ByteDance launched Toutiao Video, which was later rebranded as Xigua Video (西瓜视频, also known as Watermelon Video). Xigua Video is a short form video platform that hosted a variety of video clips that were on average 2–5 minutes long.[40] The platform has since expanded to long form video.[41]

Other products

In August 2015, ByteDance launched TopBuzz, a content platform for videos, articles, breaking news and GIFs in the U.S. and later in Brazil in 2016.[42] ByteDance launched PGC short video platform TopBuzz Video in Japan in September 2016.[43] In October 2016, ByteDance invested in India's largest vernacular content aggregation platform Dailyhunt.[44] In December 2016, ByteDance invested in the Indonesian news recommendation platform BABE.[45]

In February 2017, ByteDance acquired Flipagram.[46] In July 2017, ByteDance launched their UGC short video platform Hypstar (Vigo Video) in Southeast Asia.[47] In November 2017, ByteDance acquired global news app News Republic and global lip-sync video community musical.ly.[44][48] In November 2019, it was reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had opened an investigation into ByteDance regarding its acquisition of musical.ly on national security grounds after it dissipated from TikTok on August 2, 2018. The app now takes on the TikTok name.[15][49]

In November 2017, ByteDance acquired News Republic from Cheetah Mobile.[50] ByteDance also started Gogokid in 2018, an online English learning platform for children that provides one-on-one classes with native English speakers.

In December 2019, ByteDance began a test release of its music streaming app Resso in India and Indonesia.[51] On March 4, 2020, the company officially launched the app, which it described as a "social music streaming app". Resso allows users to highlight and share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content with each other alongside streaming of full-length tracks.[52] Resso says that it has licensing agreements in place with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Merlin and Beggars Group, among others.[53]

In April 2020, the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered ByteDance to take down its office collaboration tool called Feishu because it could be used to circumvent internet censorship.[54]

List of overseas products
  • Vigo Video/Hypster/Flipagram: Merged with TikTok.
  • CapCut: Video editor on mobile device.
  • TopBuzz
  • News Republic
  • Lark: Productivity tools like G Suite.
  • Helo: Micro-blogging for India.
  • BaBe: News-feed for Indonesia.
  • Resso: Streaming services for Southeast Asia.
  • Peoople: Social recommendation by friends and KOLs.
  • Sharee: Interest-feed for the Japanese market.

Technology

The Underlying AI Technology

In 2016, ByteDance's AI Lab and Peking University co-developed Xiaomingbot (张小明), an artificial intelligence bot that writes news articles. The bot published 450 articles during the 15-day 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. In general, Xiaomingbot published stories approximately two seconds after the event ended.[34]

ByteDance's research arm, the AI lab, was founded in March 2016. It is headed by Wei-Ying Ma, former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia.[55] The lab's research focuses on AI for understanding information (text, images, videos) in depth, and developing large-scale machine learning algorithms for personalized information recommendations.[56]

Lawsuits

Huxiu

In December 2018, ByteDance sued Huxiu for defamation after Huxiu reported that ByteDance's Indian-language news app Helo was propagating misinformation.[57]

US Federal Trade Commission

On February 27, 2019, the FTC fined TikTok Inc. US$5.7 million for collecting information from minors under the age of 13 in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the United States.[58][59] ByteDance later added a kids-only mode to TikTok which blocks the upload of videos, the building of user profiles, direct messaging, and commenting on other's videos, while still allowing the viewing and recording of content.[60]

Ban on TikTok

Citing national security issues the Indian Government banned TikTok along with 58 Chinese apps including UC Browser, ShareIt, WeChat, Club Factory, CamScanner on June 29, 2020. [61] It was later reported that Bytedance had faced a loss of about $6 billion due to this ban.[62]

gollark: Marriage digraph WHEN?
gollark: Sounds highly enforceable.
gollark: Oh, yes, true. I think that should be updated to create an arbitrary marriage digraph.
gollark: This isn't a plain optimal stopping problem situation.
gollark: Divorce is totally a thing.

References
  1. Feng, Venus (2019-03-29). "The complex fortune growing inside Bytedance, the world's most valuable startup". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2020-06-01.
  2. "TikTok parent ByteDance rakes in USD 20 billion revenue in 2019, up 180% year-on-year: Report". Archived from the original on 2019-03-25. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
  3. "Bytedance company profile - Office locations, Competitors, Funding, Valuation, Financials, Employees, Key People, Subsidiaries, News". Craft.co. Archived from the original on 2019-07-08. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  4. "ByteDance". Bytedance.com. Archived from the original on 2019-01-20. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
  5. "ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, is now reportedly worth over $100 billion". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2020-05-27. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
  6. Osawa, Juro (2017-07-19). "How a News Startup Caught China's Tencent by Surprise". The Information. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  7. "This Startup Is Luring Top Talent With $3 Million Pay Packages". Bloomberg.com. 24 September 2017. Archived from the original on 8 March 2018. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
  8. "Twitter · Twitter". Twitter. 18 November 2018. Archived from the original on 17 September 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  9. Lahiri, Tripti (2019-03-04). "Facebook finally has a serious Chinese rival". Quartz. Archived from the original on 2019-04-13. Retrieved 2019-04-14.
  10. Steinberg, Julie; Lin, Liza (2018-08-07). "Beijing Bytedance Technology Seeks to Raise $3 Billion Privately". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2018-08-07. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  11. Wang, Yaqiu (January 24, 2020). "Targeting TikTok's privacy alone misses a larger issue: Chinese state control". Quartz. Archived from the original on March 16, 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-18.
  12. "The National Public Security New Media Matrix Enters Today's Headlines, and the Vibrato Ceremony is held in Beijing". Sohu (in Chinese). April 25, 2019. Archived from the original on 2020-08-11. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  13. "Bytedance teams up with a state-run Chinese publisher". The Economist. 2019-12-21. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on December 21, 2019. Retrieved 2019-12-22.
  14. Galbraith, Andrew; Yang, Yingzhi (December 14, 2019). "ByteDance unit establishes venture with Chinese state media firm". Reuters. Archived from the original on December 22, 2019. Retrieved December 22, 2019.
  15. Roumeliotis, Greg (November 1, 2019). "U.S. opens national security investigation into TikTok - sources". Reuters. Archived from the original on November 2, 2019. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
  16. Fifield, Anna (November 28, 2019). "TikTok's owner is helping China's campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 28, 2019. Retrieved November 28, 2019.
  17. Cockerell, Isobel (2020-01-24). "Xinjiang's TikTok wipes away evidence of Uyghur persecution". Coda Media. Archived from the original on 2020-06-03. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  18. Potkin, Fanny (2020-08-13). "Exclusive: ByteDance censored anti-China content in Indonesia until mid-2020 - sources". Reuters. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
  19. Ltd, ByteDance. "ByteDance Names Kevin Mayer Chief Operating Officer". www.prnewswire.com. Archived from the original on 2020-05-25. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
  20. "Trump Signs Executive Order That Will Effectively Ban Use Of TikTok In the U.S." NPR.org. Archived from the original on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  21. CNN, Nikki Carvajal and Caroline Kelly. "Trump issues orders banning TikTok and WeChat from operating in 45 days if they are not sold by Chinese parent companies". CNN. Archived from the original on 2020-08-10. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  22. "[Exclusive] Zhang Yiming's Full Internal Letter: ByteDance 'Understands' US Decision, Still Aspires to Become Transformative Global Company". Pandaily. 2020-08-03. Archived from the original on 2020-08-07. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  23. "TikTok threatens legal action against Trump US ban". BBC News. 2020-08-07. Archived from the original on 2020-08-09. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  24. Chen, Caiwei (2020-08-07). "TikTok Owner ByteDance Threatens to Sue Trump Administration as US Calls for Broader Ban of Chinese Tech". Pandaily. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  25. Fischer, Sara (August 15, 2020). "Trump tightens screws on ByteDance to sell Tiktok". Axios. Retrieved August 15, 2020.
  26. "宁静上《冒犯家族》遭"吐槽" 内涵段子app用户的神评论太犀利了". tech.ifeng.com. Archived from the original on 2019-06-18. Retrieved 2019-06-18.
  27. "Jokes app Neihan Duanzi shuttered by China's media regulator for 'vulgarity' | Society News". SupChina. 2018-04-12. Archived from the original on 2019-05-31. Retrieved 2019-06-18.
  28. Spence, Philip (January 16, 2019). "ByteDance Can't Outrun Beijing's Shadow". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on January 16, 2019. Retrieved September 15, 2019.
  29. Romm, Tony; Harwell, Drew (December 5, 2019). "TikTok leader schedules Washington trip to meet with lawmakers as investigations loom". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 6, 2019. Retrieved December 6, 2019.
  30. Pham, Sherisse (2018-11-02). "Why China's tech giants are cozying up to the Communist Party". CNN. Archived from the original on 2019-05-11. Retrieved 2019-09-17.
  31. Fan, Jiayang (April 19, 2018). "Why China Cracked Down on the Social-Media Giant Bytedance". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on November 25, 2019. Retrieved September 16, 2019.
  32. Bandurski, David (May 2, 2018). "Tech Firms Tilt Toward the Party". China Media Project. Archived from the original on May 2, 2018. Retrieved September 16, 2019.
  33. Bischoff, Paul (2014-06-03). "The simple news reader app that's taking China by storm just netted $100 million funding from Sequoia Capital". Tech in Asia. Archived from the original on 2018-05-13. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  34. Hariharan, Anu (2017-10-12). "The Hidden Forces Behind Toutiao: China's Content King". Y Combinator. Archived from the original on 2019-11-12. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  35. Xueqing, Li (8 November 2016). "How a 24-Year-Old Blogger Became China's Pig Whisperer". Sixth Tone. Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  36. Yuan, Li (2017-08-24). "The News Reads You in China—and People Can't Get Enough of It". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2019-04-30. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  37. Jing, Yu; Margain, Oscar; Gupta, Alok (17 June 2020). "App developers help find missing persons through crowdsourcing". CGTN.
  38. Jing, Meng (2018-02-15). "This migrant worker lost his 56-year-old mentally ill sibling during Lunar New Year travel crush. Toutiao helped find him". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 2018-03-14. Retrieved 2018-03-21.
  39. Saini, Jiya (2019-08-12). "Toutiao Search is online now, a search engine from ByteDance". Revyuh. Archived from the original on 2019-11-12. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  40. "西瓜视频上线，今日头条视频布局呈鼎立之势". Sohu.com. 8 June 2017. Archived from the original on 22 June 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  41. "ByteDance to enter long-form streaming video market". South China Morning Post. 2018-09-15. Archived from the original on 2019-12-13. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
  42. "2016 Chinese App Overseas Performance Report". Cheetah Data. 2016-12-13. Archived from the original on 2018-01-29. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  43. "無料動画アプリTopBuzz Video コンテンツ提供者を募集". japan.cnet.com. Archived from the original on 2018-05-12. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  44. Russel, Jon (2017-11-10). "Ambitious new media firm ByteDance is no longer a secret outside of China – TechCrunch". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2018-01-02. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  45. "Toutiao Pushes Short Video Business Globalization With USD1 Billion Musical.ly Takeover". Yicai Global. Archived from the original on 2018-05-07. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  46. "Toutiao, a Chinese news app that's making headlines". The Economist. 2017-11-18. Archived from the original on 2019-12-08. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  47. "文化"走出去"的方式有很多 短视频应用出海成小潮流". new.qq.com.
  48. Spangler, Todd (10 November 2017). "Beijing's ByteDance Steps Up Global Video and Entertainment Profile With Musical.ly Buy, Live.me Funding". Variety. Archived from the original on 10 February 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  49. Harwell, Drew; Romm, Tony (November 1, 2019). "U.S. government investigating TikTok over national security concerns". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 2, 2019. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
  50. Jing, Meng (2017-11-10). "China's Toutiao buys teen-favourite video creation app Musical.ly". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 2019-11-14. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  51. "Bytedance tests music-streaming app Resso in India and Indonesia". Archived from the original on 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  52. "Resso, ByteDance's music streaming app, officially launches in India, sans Tencent-backed Universal Music". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  53. Tagat, Anurag; Tagat, Anurag (2020-03-04). "TikTok Owner ByteDance Launches Resso App in India, Taking on Spotify". Variety. Archived from the original on 2020-04-06. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  54. Huang, Zheping (April 24, 2020). "China Orders TikTok Owner ByteDance to Remove Work-From-Home App". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on April 24, 2020. Retrieved April 24, 2020.
  55. Feng, Emily (2017-05-09). "Toutiao touts AI for individual news in vast China market". The Financial Times. Archived from the original on 2019-09-22. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  56. Knight, Will (2017-01-26). "This Chinese media giant is using machine learning to go after Facebook's lunch". MIT Technology Review.
  57. Liao, Rita (2018-12-19). "TikTok parent ByteDance sues Chinese news site that exposed fake news problem". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2019-03-02. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
  58. "Video Social Networking App Musical.ly Agrees to Settle FTC Allegations That it Violated Children's Privacy Law". Federal Trade Commission. 26 February 2019. Archived from the original on 4 November 2019. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  59. Lieber, Chavie (28 February 2019). "TikTok has been illegally collecting children's data". Vox. Archived from the original on 31 August 2019. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  60. Lee, Dami (2019-02-27). "TikTok stops young users from uploading videos after FTC settlement". The Verge. Archived from the original on 2019-02-28. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
  61. Singh, Manish (June 29, 2020). "India bans TikTok, dozens of other Chinese apps". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 2 August 2020. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
  62. "ByteDance loss may hit $6b after India bans Chinese apps". Global Times. Archived from the original on 2020-07-01. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.