Founded by Zhang Yiming,Liang Rubo,and a team of others in 2012,ByteDance developed the video-sharingappsTikTok and Douyin. The company is also the developer of the news platform Toutiao.
ByteDance has attracted legislative and media attention in several countries over security,surveillance,and censorship concerns.[8][9][10]
History
In 2009,software engineer and entrepreneur Zhang Yiming collaborated with his friend Liang Rubo to co-found 99fang.com,a real estate search engine.[11] In early 2012,the pair rented an apartment in Zhongguancun and,along with several other 99fang employees,began developing an app that would use big data algorithms to classify news according to users' preferences,which would later become Toutiao.[12] That March,Yiming and Liang founded ByteDance.[13]
Launch of first apps
In March 2012,ByteDance launched its first app,called Neihan Duanzi (内涵段子,lit. "profound gags"). This allowed users to circulate jokes,memes,and humorous videos. Before being forced by the Chinese government to shut down in 2018,Neihan Duanzi had over 200 million users.[14]
In August 2012,ByteDance launched the first version of news and content platform Toutiao (头条,lit. "headlines"),which would become their core product.[15]
In January 2013,in an attempt for commercialism and nationalism,a four-part plan for the future was presented to executives. Part four of the plan was to build an English version of Toutiao to gain users in English-speaking countries. At the time,there was an app race for video views and the attention of phone users.[16]
2016 to present
In March 2016,ByteDance established its research arm,called the ByteDance AI Lab. It is headed by Wei-Ying Ma,the former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia.[17][18]
From late 2016 until 2017,ByteDance made a number of acquisitions and new product launches. In December 2016,it invested in the Indonesian news recommendation platform BABE.[19] Two months later,in February 2017,ByteDance acquired Flipagram,which was later rebranded to Vigo Video (Hypstar) in July 2017.[20] Vigo Video later shut down permanently on 31 October 2020. In November 2017,ByteDance acquired musical.ly for an estimated US$1 billion. At the time of acquisition,TikTok was only available in India and musical.ly was available globally. In order for TikTok to go global,ByteDance merged musical.ly with TikTok on 2 August 2018,keeping the name TikTok. Another notable acquisition includes News Republic from Cheetah Mobile in November 2017.[21]
Since 2018,ByteDance has been in litigation with Tencent.[22]:109 ByteDance and its affiliates brought a series of unfair competition lawsuits against Tencent,alleging that Tencent was blocking their content.[22]:109 As of at least early 2024,these lawsuits had not reached resolution,largely due to disputes about jurisdiction.[22]:109 Tencent filed two lawsuits against ByteDance and its affiliates,alleging that they were using WeChat and QQ profiles without authorization and illegally crawling data from public WeChat accounts.[22]:109 Tencent obtained an injunction barring ByteDance from this practice.[22]:109
In December 2018,ByteDance sued Chinese technology news site Huxiu for defamation after Huxiu reported that ByteDance's Indian-language news app Helo was propagating fake news.[23]
In March 2021,the Financial Times reported that ByteDance was part of a group of Chinese companies that aimed to deploy technology to circumvent Apple's privacy policies.[24][25]
In April 2021,ByteDance announced that it had created a new division called BytePlus to distribute the software framework underlying TikTok,so that others may launch similar apps.[26]
In August 2021,ByteDance acquired Pico,an Oculus-like virtual reality startup.[27]
In June 2022,the Financial Times reported on a culture clash at ByteDance's London office that has led to a staff exodus.[28]
In March 2023,TheWall Street Journal reported that former employees allege that the company engages in a practice called "horse racing," in which several teams are assigned to build the same product.[29] When one version is deemed to perform better,the team designing the better version is provided with more support.[29]
In April 2023,ByteDance filed a trademark for a book publisher called 8th Note Press.[30]
In December 2023,The Verge reported that ByteDance used OpenAI's API for its own generative AI projects. Afterwards,OpenAI announced that while usage by ByteDance was minimal,its account has been suspended pending further investigation whether any terms of service were violated. ByteDance stated that it had been licensed for using the API outside the Chinese market,its own chatbot is available only within China,and ChatGPT-generated data have been deleted from ByteDance's training data since the middle of 2023. Scraping existing AI models is a common shortcut for smaller companies but considered unusual for the likes of ByteDance.[31]
In May 2024,ByteDance laid off "a large percentage" of the 1,000 employees from its global user operations,content,and marketing teams. The global user operations team was disbanded and remaining employees were reassigned.[32][33]
ByteDance's owners include investors outside of China (60%),its founders and Chinese investors (20%),and employees (20%).[39] In 2021,the state-ownedChina Internet Investment Fund purchased a 1% stake in ByteDance's main Chinese subsidiary,Beijing ByteDance Technology (formerly Beijing Douyin Information Service),as a golden share investment[40][41][42] and seated Wu Shugang,a government official with a background in government propaganda,as one of the subsidiary's board members.[43][44][45]
Zhang Yiming was ByteDance's chairman and CEO from its founding in 2012 until 2021,when co-founder Liang Rubo took over as CEO.[47]
On 19 May 2020,ByteDance and Disney released an announcement that Kevin Mayer,head of Disney's streaming business,would join ByteDance. From June 2020 to his resignation 26 August 2020,Mayer served as the CEO of TikTok and the COO of ByteDance,reporting directly to the company CEO Zhang Yiming.[48][49] In 2021,Shou Zi Chew,former CFO of Xiaomi,took over as TikTok CEO.[50]
In 2014,ByteDance established an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee.[51] The company's vice president,Zhang Fuping,serves as the company's CCP Committee Secretary.[52][53] According to a report submitted to the Australian Parliament,Zhang Fuping stated that ByteDance should "transmit the correct political direction,public opinion guidance and value orientation into every business and product line."[54][55]
Board of Directors
As of November 2024,the company's board consisted of the following directors:[56]
ByteDance's China business has a strategic partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts.[57] The partnership also said that ByteDance would work with the Ministry of Public Security in cooperation on unspecified "offline activities."[58][59]
In 2018,ByteDance helped to establish the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence,an initiative backed by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Beijing municipal government.[54][60]
In 2019,ByteDance formed joint ventures with Beijing Time,a publisher controlled by the Beijing municipal CCP committee,and with Shanghai Dongfang,a state media firm in Shanghai.[61][62] In 2021,ByteDance announced that its partnership with Shanghai Dongfang had never been in operation and was disbanded.[63]
ByteDance spent more than $17.7 million on lobbying from its first report in 2019 up to July 2023,[71] and its 2023 lobbying expense added up to $8.7 million.[72]
In March 2024, ByteDance responded to ad campaigns by anti-TikTok advocacy groups calling to ban the app by launching its own $2.1 million marketing campaign across swing states that had vulnerable Senate Democrats up for re-election.[73]
First released to the public in April 2020, CapCut is a video editing software made for beginners.[74]As of March2023[update], CapCut has more than 200 million active users each month, and according to The Wall Street Journal, it was downloaded more than the TikTok app in March 2023.[75] In March 2023, it was the second-most downloaded app in the U.S. behind that for Chinese discount retailer, Temu.[29]
First released to the public in September 2016, Douyin (Chinese:抖音; pinyin:Dǒuyīn), previously named A.me, is the Chinese version of TikTok. The application is a short-form video social media platform that differs from its international counterpart version by having more advanced features.[76] TikTok and Douyin have almost the same user interface but no access to each other's content. Their servers are each based in the market where the respective app is available.[77]
First released to the public in 2019, Lark is ByteDance's enterprise collaboration platform.[78] Lark was originally developed as an internal tool, becoming ByteDance's primary internal communication and collaboration platform, but was eventually made available to external users in certain markets.[79]
First released to the public in September 2017, TikTok is a video-sharingsocial networking service[80] used to make short-form videos, from genres like dance, comedy, and education.[81][82] On 9 November 2017, ByteDance acquired Shanghai-based social media start-up Musical.ly for up to US$1 billion. They combined it and prior acquisition Flipagram[83][84] into TikTok on 2 August 2018, keeping the TikTok name.
TikTok Music
Formerly known as Resso, TikTok Music launched in Indonesia and Brazil in July 2023.[85] On 19 October 2023, TikTok Music premiered in Mexico, Singapore and Australia.[86]
The platform allows users to highlight and share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content with each other alongside streaming of full-length tracks.[87] ByteDance says that it has licensing agreements in place with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Merlin Network and Beggars Group, among others.[88] Resso was shut down in India in January 2024, due to "local market conditions".[89][90]
On 24 September 2024, ByteDance announced that TikTok Music would shut down on 28 November 2024.[91]
Toutiao (Chinese:今日头条; pinyin:Jīnrì Tóutiáo), launched in August 2012,[15] 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.[92][93]
In January 2014, the company created the "Toutiaohao" (头条号) platform to attract more content creators. Later in the year, it added video capabilities. Toutiao used interest-based and decentralized distribution to help long tail content creators find an audience.[94]
In 2017, Toutiao acquired Flipagram. ByteDance would later expand Toutiao's features to include: a missing person alerts project whose alerts have helped find 13,116 missing persons as of June 2020;[95] short-form video platform Toutiao Video, later rebranded as Xigua Video (西瓜视频, also known as Watermelon Video), which hosts video clips that are on average 2–5 minutes long;[96] and Toutiao Search, a search engine.[97]
Initially launched as Toutiao Video in 2016, Xigua Video (Chinese:西瓜视频; pinyin:Xīguā shìpín) is an online video-sharing platform that features user-created short and mid-length videos and also produces film and television content.[98]
Nuverse
Initially launched in 2019, Nuverse has launched as a video game publisher company.[99] The first game launched outside mainland China was Warhammer 40,000: Lost Crusade in 2021. Later in 2021, Moonton became a subsidiary of Nuverse, after winning the bid, initially set by Tencent.[100][101]
In 2022, the studio has launched Marvel Snap in October worldwide, after closed alpha testing in the Philippines, and gradually entering open beta with the first country being New Zealand. In November 2023, Reuters reported ByteDance was restructuring Nuverse and retreating from gaming.[102]
Whee, an image-sharing and messaging app, launched to the public in June 2024 but not the US.[34]
Other products and acquisitions
Gogokid was launched in May 2018 as an online English learning platform for children that provides one-on-one classes with native English speakers.[105] In August 2021, ByteDance announced that the app business will be shuttered and most of Gogokid's staff will be laid off, following new regulations imposed on the after-school tutoring industry in China.[106]
Neihan Duanzi, ByteDance's first app, was shut down in 2018 following a crackdown by the national media regulator.
Party Island (Chinese: 派对岛; pinyin: Pàiduì dǎo) is a social media app that allows users to create avatars, join virtual events like concerts, and chat with other participants. It also has a messaging function within the app, so users can send texts to each other privately and join group chats. It is open to public testing in July 2022.[109]
TopBuzz was a content platform for videos, articles, breaking news and GIFs.[110] The service was launched in 2015 and abandoned in 2020 due to dwindling business.[111][112] Former employees alleged that TopBuzz was used to push soft content messaging sympathetic to China in overseas markets; this was denied by ByteDance.[110]
8th Note Press, a publisher established by ByteDance in 2023.[30]
Censorship, surveillance, and data privacy concerns
In September 2024, the Federal Trade Commission released a report summarizing 9 company responses (including from ByteDance) to orders made by the agency pursuant to Section 6(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 to provide information about user and non-user data collection (including of children and teenagers) and data use by the companies that found that the companies' user and non-user data practices put individuals vulnerable to identity theft, stalking, unlawful discrimination, emotional distress and mental health issues, social stigma, and reputational harm.[124][125][126]
In April 2018, China's state media regulator, the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA), ordered the temporary removal of Toutiao and Neihan Duanzi from Chinese app stores. The NRTA accused Neihan Duanzi in particular of hosting "vulgar" and "improper" content and "triggering strong sentiments of resentment among internet users".[127] The following day, Neihan Duanzi announced it was permanently shutting down.[127] In response to the shutdown, 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.[128][129] 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.[130][131][132]
As of 2019[update], ByteDance's Beijing headquarters has maintained an office where cybersecurity police are stationed so that illegal content can be instantly reported.[133][134] In November 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered ByteDance to remove "slanderous" information on Fang Zhimin from Toutiao.[135] In April 2020, the CAC ordered ByteDance to take down its office collaboration tool, Lark, because it could be used to circumvent Internet censorship.[136] In January 2021, Chinese regulators fined ByteDance for spreading "vulgar information."[137][138] In April 2021, ByteDance was among 13 online platforms ordered by the People's Bank of China to adhere to tighter data and financial regulations.[139] The bank stated that ByteDance must conduct comprehensive self-examination and rectification to adhere to the country's laws.[140] In May 2021, the CAC stated that ByteDance had engaged in illegal data collection and misuse of personal information.[141]
In April 2022, ByteDance announced that it would report users' content on Toutiao and Douyin that engaged in "historical nihilism" in contradiction of official CCP history.[142]
In November 2023, Forbes reported that ByteDance's internal workplace tool called Feishu, which contains "product network security, data security, personal information, and daily operations," was accessed by the CAC and other Chinese government authorities in the run-up to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.[133]
Citing national security issues the Indian Government banned CapCut and TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on 29 June 2020.[144] The ban was made permanent in January 2021.[145][75] In March 2021, the Indian government froze ByteDance's bank accounts in the country for alleged tax evasion, which ByteDance disputed.[146]
In December 2022, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council announced an investigation into ByteDance on suspicion of operating an illegal subsidiary in the country.[148] The company reportedly registered "Tiktoktaiwan Co Ltd" in March, which changed its name to "ByteDance Taiwan" in November.[149]
In 2019, ByteDance's subsidiary TikTok was fined by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.[150][151] In response, ByteDance 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.[152] In August 2024, the FTC and U.S. Department of Justice filed a joint lawsuit alleging violations of the 2019 consent decree with the FTC.[153]
TikTok and ByteDance have come under US lawmaker scrutiny due to fears of surveillance by the Chinese government.[154] U.S. President Donald Trump wanted TikTok to be sold or be banned from app stores in the country. His executive orders were later blocked by the courts and revoked by his successor Joe Biden.[155][156][157][158] On 28 August 2020, China announced an update to its export control rules that, according to experts, could give Chinese authorities a say in any potential sale of ByteDance's technology to foreign firms.[159]
In March 2024 the House of Representatives passed a bill which, if passed through the Senate and signed by the President, forces ByteDance to divest TikTok or have the platform banned.[163] In April, the United States Congress passed a modified version of the bill in a foreign aid package.[164][165] The bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden on 24 April 2024, giving ByteDance until 19 January 2025, to divest TikTok.[166]
In November 2024, Donald Trump changed his opinion and spoke out against a ban of the platform in the US after ByteDance investor Jeff Yass had donated to his election campaign.[167]
On December 6, 2024, a panel of judges on the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law and upheld it.[172][173][174] After the DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected the company's request for an injunction on December 13 against the law's ban until a full review is conducted by the U.S. Supreme Court,[175][176] TikTok appealed the injunction decision to the Supreme Court on December 16.[177][178] On December 18, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear the First Amendment claims for the case and scheduled oral arguments for January 10.[179] It was consolidated for consideration with Firebaugh v. Garland, a lawsuit filed by TikTok content creators against the law.[180][181]
WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ; lit. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese and Hong Kong counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app or the web.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. Zhang is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$45.6 billion as of October 2024, according to Forbes and US$43.1 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On November 4, 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights. The surging global popularity of TikTok made Zhang the richest man in China in 2024.
Kuaishou Technology is a Chinese publicly traded partly state-owned holding company based in Haidian District, Beijing, that was founded in 2011 by Hua Su (宿华) and Cheng Yixiao (程一笑). The company is known for developing a mobile app for sharing users' short videos, a social network, and video special effects editor.
Bigo Live is a global social live streaming platform owned by BIGO Technology based in Singapore, which was founded in 2014 by David Li and Jason Hu. As of 2019, Bigo Technology is owned by JOYY.
ShareChat is an Indian social networking service platform, owned by Bangalore-based Mohalla Tech. It was founded by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan, and incorporated on 8 January 2015. ShareChat app has over 350 million monthly active users across 15 Indian languages. The current valuation of the company is $5 billion.
Charli Grace D'Amelio is an American social media personality and dancer. She was a competitive dancer for over a decade before starting her social media career in 2019, when she began posting dance videos on the video-sharing platform TikTok. She quickly amassed a large following and subsequently became the most-followed creator on the platform in March 2020 until she was surpassed by Khaby Lame in June 2022. With over 155 million followers, she is the second most-followed person on TikTok, as of 2024.
Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service that was first released for iOS and Android in 2015. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to, music using artificial intelligence technology. It initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.
U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA) v. Trump was a court case pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction on September 20, 2020, blocking the Trump administration's ban order against WeChat based on concerns raised about harm to First Amendment rights and the hardships imposed on a minority community using the app as a primary means of communication. The lawsuit was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.
Xigua Video is a Chinese online video-sharing platform owned by ByteDance. Originally serving primarily as a sharing platform for Toutiao's user-created short videos, Xigua now also produces film and television content. Xigua Video continuously provides content to different audiences through personalized services. As of June 2020, the platform has 131 million monthly active users.
There are reports of TikTok censoring political content related to China and other countries as well as content from minority creators. TikTok says that its initial content moderation policies, many of which are no longer applicable, were aimed at reducing divisiveness and were not politically motivated.
In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that TikTok owner ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.
YouTube Shorts is the short-form section of the American online video-sharing platform YouTube. Shorts focuses on vertical videos that are less than 180 seconds of duration and various features for user interaction. As of May 2024, Shorts have collectively earned over 5 trillion views since the platform was made available to the general public on July 13, 2021, including views that pre-date the YouTube Shorts feature. Creators earn money based on the amount of views they receive, or through ad revenue. The increased popularity of YouTube Shorts has led to concerns about addiction for teenagers.
CapCut, known in China as JianYing and formerly internationally as ViaMaker, is a Chinese short-form video editing app developed by ByteDance.
TikTok has sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government, leading to restrictions and bans in the United States.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an act of Congress that was signed into law on April 24, 2024, as part of Public Law 118-50. It would ban social networking services within 270 to 360 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a "foreign adversary controlled application"; the definition covers websites and application software, including mobile apps. The act explicitly applies to ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok—without the need for additional determination. It ceases to be applicable if the foreign adversary controlled application is divested and no longer considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.
TikTok has been involved in a number of lawsuits since its founding, with a number of them relating to TikTok's data collection techniques.
↑ Stokel-Walker, Chris (24 January 2023). TikTok Boom: China's Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media. Sourcebooks, Inc. ISBN978-1-7282-8345-6.
↑ 文化"走出去"的方式有很多 短视频应用出海成小潮流[There are many ways to 'go global' for culture, short video applications are becoming a trend]. New.QQ.com (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 23 August 2020. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
↑ Ye, Josh (15 March 2024). "TikTok ban bill: What we know about Tiktok's Chinese owner". Reuters. Retrieved 15 March 2024. Like with most big Chinese companies, China's ruling Communist Party has set up a party branch at ByteDance - in 2014, according to state media, raising concerns about Beijing's influence over the company.
↑ Wang, Yaqiu (24 January 2020). "Targeting TikTok's privacy alone misses a larger issue: Chinese state control". Quartz. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 18 July 2020. Many companies have an internal party committee as part of their governance structure. ByteDance has one, headed by the company's vice president Zhang Fuping, and has since 2017. Party committee members at ByteDance regularly gather to study Party General Secretary Xi Jinping's speeches and pledge to follow the party in technological innovation.
↑ "党支部——中国互联网公司的标配"[Party branch—the standard feature of Chinese Internet companies]. China Digital Times (in Chinese (China)). 9 August 2020. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
↑ 全国公安新媒体矩阵入驻今日头条、抖音仪式在京举行[A Ceremony is held in Beijing for the Ministry of Public Security's 'New Media Matrix' Launching an Account in Toutiao and Douyin]. Sohu (in Chinese). 25 April 2019. Archived from the original on 11 August 2020. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
↑ Andrews, Natalie; Kristina, Peterson (31 March 2024). "Early Clues Emerge on Senate's Plans for TikTok". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 1 April 2024. Retrieved 1 April 2024. The company started a $2.1 million marketing campaign across Senate battleground states such as Nevada, Montana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, all represented by vulnerable Senate Democrats running for re-election this year. The ads will run on television, as well as on billboards and bus stops.
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US$120 billion (2023) [4] 
