Native name | 字节跳动有限公司 |
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Company type | Private |
Industry | Internet |
Founded | 13 March 2012 |
Founders |
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Headquarters |
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Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
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Products | |
Revenue | US$85.2 billion (2022) [4] |
US$2 billion (2022) [4] | |
Number of employees | c. 150,000 (2023) [5] |
Subsidiaries |
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ASNs | 396986, 138699 |
Website | bytedance |
Zijie Tiaodong | |||||||||||||||
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Chinese | 字节跳动 | ||||||||||||||
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ByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian,Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands. [6]
Founded by Zhang Yiming,Liang Rubo and a team of others in 2012,ByteDance developed the video-sharing apps TikTok 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. [7] [8] [9]
In 2009,software engineer and entrepreneur Zhang Yiming collaborated with his friend Liang Rubo to co-found 99fang.com,a real estate search engine. [10] 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. [11] That March,Yiming and Liang founded ByteDance. [12]
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. [13]
In August 2012,ByteDance launched the first version of news and content platform Toutiao (头条,lit. "headlines"),which would become their core product. [14]
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. [15]
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. [16] [17]
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. [18] Two months later,in February 2017,ByteDance acquired Flipagram,which was later rebranded to Vigo Video (Hypstar) in July 2017. [19] Vigo Video later shut down permanently on October 31,2020. 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 August 2,2018,keeping the name TikTok. Another notable acquisition includes News Republic from Cheetah Mobile in November 2017. [20]
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. [21]
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. [22] [23]
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. [24]
In August 2021,ByteDance acquired Pico,an Oculus-like virtual reality startup. [25]
In June 2022,the Financial Times reported on a culture clash at ByteDance's London office that has led to a staff exodus. [26]
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. [27] When one version is deemed to perform better,the team designing the better version is provided with more support. [27]
In April 2023,ByteDance filed a trademark for a book publisher called 8th Note Press. [28]
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. [29]
ByteDance is backed financially by Jeff Yass' Susquehanna International Group,Primavera Capital Group,Kohlberg Kravis Roberts,SoftBank Group,Sequoia Capital,General Atlantic,and Hillhouse Capital Group. [30] [31] [32] As of March 2021 [update] ,it was estimated to be valued at $250 billion in private trades. [33] [ needs update ]
ByteDance's owners include its founders and Chinese investors (20%),global investors (60%),and employees (20%). [34] In 2021,the state-owned China 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 [35] [36] [37] and seated Wu Shugang,a government official with a background in government propaganda,as one of the subsidiary's board members. [38] [39] [40]
Zhang Yiming was ByteDance's chairman and CEO from its founding in 2012 until 2021,when co-founder Liang Rubo took over as CEO. [42]
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. [43] [44] In 2021,Shou Zi Chew,former CFO of Xiaomi,took over as TikTok CEO. [45]
In 2014,ByteDance established an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee. [46] The company's vice president,Zhang Fuping,serves as the company's CCP Committee Secretary. [47] [48] 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." [49] [50]
ByteDance's China business has a strategic partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security for the ministry's public relations efforts. [51] The partnership also said that ByteDance would work with the Ministry of Public Security in cooperation on unspecified "offline activities." [52] [53]
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. [49] [54]
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. [55] [56] In 2021,ByteDance announced that its partnership with Shanghai Dongfang had never been in operation and was disbanded. [57]
In June 2022,ByteDance partnered with Shanghai United Media Group to launch a plan to develop domestic and foreign influencers. [58]
ByteDance's lobbying efforts in the U.S. are led by Michael Beckerman. [59] [60] According to disclosures filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995,ByteDance has lobbied the United States Congress,White House,Department of Commerce,Department of State,and the Department of Defense. [61] [62] As of July 2023 [update] ,ByteDance has spent more than $17.7 million in lobbying since it first reported payments to federal lobbyists in 2019. [63] In 2023,the company spent $8.7 million on lobbying. [64]
ByteDance's lobbying has included hiring K&L Gates,LGL Advisors,and other firms to influence bills such as the United States Innovation and Competition Act,American Innovation and Choice Online Act,and the annual National Defense Authorization Act. [60]
ByteDance's lobbying team also includes former US Senators Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.),and former US Representatives Jeff Denham (R-Calif.),Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) and Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.). [65]
In the run-up to the 2024 United States Senate elections,ByteDance launched a $2.1 million ad campaign targeting US Senate districts with vulnerable Democrats. [66]
First released to the public in April 2020,CapCut is a video editing software made for beginners. [67] As of March 2023 [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. [68] In March 2023,it was the second-most downloaded app in the U.S. behind that for Chinese discount retailer,Temu. [27]
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, such as e-commerce. [69] 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. [70]
First released to the public in 2019, Lark is ByteDance's enterprise collaboration platform. [71] 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. [72]
First released to the public in September 2017, TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service [73] used to make short-form videos, from genres like dance, comedy, and education. [74] [75] 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 [76] [77] into TikTok on 2 August 2018, keeping the TikTok name.
Formerly known as Resso, TikTok Music launched in Indonesia and Brazil in July 2023. [78] On October 19, 2023, TikTok Music premiered in Mexico, Singapore and Australia. [79]
The platform allows users to highlight and share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content with each other alongside streaming of full-length tracks. [80] ByteDance says that it has licensing agreements in place with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Merlin Network and Beggars Group, among others. [81] Resso will be shut down in India in January 2024, due to "local market conditions". [82] [83]
Toutiao (Chinese :今日头条; pinyin :Jīnrì Tóutiáo), launched in August 2012, [14] 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. [84] [85]
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. [86]
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; [87] 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; [88] and Toutiao Search, a search engine. [89]
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. [90]
Initially launched in 2019, Nuverse has launched as a video game publisher company. [91] 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. [92] [93]
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. [94]
ByteDance has garnered attention over surveillance, [103] [104] data privacy, [105] and censorship concerns, [106] [107] including content pertaining to human rights in Tibet and the persecution of Uyghurs in China. [note 1] Concern has also been raised over the potential effects, including extraterritorial jurisdiction, of China's National Intelligence Law and Cybersecurity Law on ByteDance and its employees. [113] [49] : 42–43
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". [114] The following day, Neihan Duanzi announced it was permanently shutting down. [114] 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. [115] [116] 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. [117] [118] [119]
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. [120] [121] In November 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered ByteDance to remove "slanderous" information on Fang Zhimin from Toutiao. [122] In April 2020, the CAC ordered ByteDance to take down its office collaboration tool, Lark, because it could be used to circumvent Internet censorship. [123] In January 2021, Chinese regulators fined ByteDance for spreading "vulgar information." [124] [125] 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. [126] The bank stated that ByteDance must conduct comprehensive self-examination and rectification to adhere to the country's laws. [127] In May 2021, the CAC stated that ByteDance had engaged in illegal data collection and misuse of personal information. [128]
In March 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation fined a ByteDance subsidiary and other companies for antitrust violations. [57]
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. [129]
In November 2022, during the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, the CAC directed ByteDance to intensify its censorship of the protests. [130]
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. [120]
Citing national security issues the Indian Government banned CapCut and TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps on 29 June 2020. [131] The ban was made permanent in January 2021. [132] [68] In March 2021, the Indian government froze ByteDance's bank accounts in the country for alleged tax evasion, which ByteDance disputed. [133]
In 2023, ByteDance was scrutinized by the Central Bank of Ireland for deficiencies in its anti-money laundering controls of its payment division. [134]
In December 2022, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council announced an investigation into ByteDance on suspicion of operating an illegal subsidiary in the country. [135] The company reportedly registered "Tiktoktaiwan Co Ltd" in March, which changed its name to "ByteDance Taiwan" in November. [136]
In 2022, Turkey's Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) initiated a probe into ByteDance in relation to millions of dollars in fund transfers involving TikTok accounts that were suspected of money laundering or terrorism financing. [134]
In 2019, ByteDance's subsidiary TikTok was fined by the Federal Trade Commission (FCC) for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. [137] [138] 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. [139]
TikTok and ByteDance have come under US lawmaker scrutiny due to fears of surveillance by the Chinese government. [140] 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. [141] [142] [143] [144] 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. [145]
In March 2023, the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an investigation after ByteDance employees tracked journalists to find internal leaks. [7] In response, ByteDance fired four employees. [146] [147] [148]
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. [149]
Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 10-minute-long looping video clips. It was originally launched on January 24, 2013, by Vine Labs, Inc and Big Human. Bought by Twitter, Inc. in 2012 before its launch, the service was shut down on January 17, 2017, and the app was discontinued a few months later.
Musical.ly was a social media service headquartered in Shanghai with an American office in Santa Monica, California, on which platform users created and shared short lip-sync videos. The first prototype was released in April 2014, and then after that, the official version was launched in August of 2014. Through the app, users could create 15-second to 1-minute lip-syncing music videos and choose sound tracks to accompany, use different speed options and add pre-set filters and effects. The app also allowed users to browse popular "musers", content, trending songs, sounds and hashtags, and uniquely interact with their fans.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese 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 10 minutes.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. As of March 2024, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$40.2 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the second-richest person in China, after Zhong Shanshan. 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.
Kuaishou Technology is a Chinese publicly traded partly state-owned holding company based in Haidian District (Beijing), 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, a global technology company listed on the NASDAQ.
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. 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 151 million followers, she is the second-most-followed-person on TikTok, as of 2024.
Zynn was a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by Kuaishou, a Beijing-based internet technology company established in 2011 by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao. It was used to create and share short videos, and it pays its users for using the app and referring others. Zynn was launched on May 7, 2020. It became the most-downloaded app in the App Store in the same month. It has also been criticized for being a "pyramid scheme", and it has faced accusations of plagiarism and stealing content. Aside from Zynn in North America, Kuaishou is available under the name Kwai in Russia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, America, India, and the Middle East. Kwai used to be available in Australia and the United States on the App Store, but was removed at an unknown date. Zynn was permanently shut down on the 20th of August, 2021.
Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to music using artificial intelligence technology. Triller was released for iOS and Android in 2015, and initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.
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 is evidence that TikTok has down-weighted the posts of topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party. Topics alleged to have been censored by the platform include the Persecution of Uyghurs in China, the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, the Sino-Indian border dispute, foreign political leaders, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and people of African descent. TikTok has also removed or omitted information from its services to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws. TikTok's responses to claims of censorship have varied, responding that the platform was attempting to protect users from bullying, arguing that certain instances were the result of human error, and stating that such incidents were the result of algorithmic mistakes.
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 video-sharing app YouTube. Shorts focuses on vertical videos at a maximum length of 60 seconds and various features for user interaction. As of March 2024, Shorts have collectively earned over 5 trillion views since the platform was made available to the public on July 13, 2021, which include video 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.
Kelly Zhang is a Chinese businesswoman. She is the chief executive officer of ByteDance China. She is responsible for overseeing the operations and management of the company's China portfolio, including the video-sharing platform Douyin and the news aggregator Toutiao.
CapCut, formerly known as JianYing, is a Chinese short-form video editing app developed by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
TikTok has been involved in a number of lawsuits since its founding, with a number of them relating to TikTok's data collection techniques.
CIIF's board appointee to ByteDance has no clear business experience on his résumé, according to Ms Li, but a background in communist propaganda.
Wu, the government official with a seat on Beijing ByteDance Technology's board, has spent most of his public sector career in propaganda since he joined China's Ministry of Education in 2007, according to Chinese government websites and official media reports.
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.
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 President Xi Jinping's speeches and pledge to follow the party in technological innovation.
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.