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For those unfamiliar with ByteDance, they’re actually much bigger than you might think, and have become serious competitors to China’s leading tech companies (B

For those unfamiliar with ByteDance, they’re actually much bigger than you might think, and have become serious competitors to China’s leading tech companies (BATX + H) [1]: - Baidu - Alibaba - Tencent - Xiaomi - Huawei You can see how their offering compare in this Big Tech Spreadsheet [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BATX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BATX [2] https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/big-tech https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/big-tech

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
I'm guessing there's some internal pressure. He's probably going to get a year off and then a cushy role in the party.
blueblisters 5y ago
TikTok will surpass Facebook as the most engaging social media app in the US with fewer DAUs than Facebook. It's already at par [1] according to some data. ByteDance might become the most valuable company in the world, not just in China. [1] https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1394704798591590401?s=20 https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1394704798591590401?s...
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  That's a prediction and a half. It would only become the most valuable company if the stock market goes crazy about it, as it stands, one does not become that with just a mobile app / social network.
  - xvector 5y ago
    Still, it will be an incredibly valuable company, especially as the Chinese middle class comes into wealth.
    - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
      China seems to be aging faster than the middle class can get wealthy. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/chinas-aging-population-is-bigger-problem-than-one-child-policy-economists.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/chinas-aging-population-is-b...
      - eunos 5y ago
        The older folks were not educated (less than 10% with college degree). The young people are much more (close to 30%). Besides, close to 40% pop lives in rural.
      - nomay 5y ago
        I've come to realize that the inherent advantage to the China system is that it can dispose of people at will, it doesn't need to care about your feel and whether you want to be in the loser pack, all in the grand name of the greater good. That makes it nimble, and powerful, that means the system itself almost always wins, as for the people, well, good luck.
        elefanten 5y ago
        The CCP runs an arbitrage. It is willing to destroy any citizen’s life — to deprive, to immiserate, to extract - in exchange for marginally better systemic performance for the party state. Most other modern governments just aren’t willing and able to use and abuse their citizens to quite the same degree that the CCP is. And with a lot of expendable people + total control, you can drive some fast results. But this is also why the world needs to firmly reject such unethical governance plays, by banding together to shun and decouple from any ruling elite that tries to run them.
        justicezyx 5y ago
        > Most other modern governments just aren’t willing and able to use and abuse their citizens to quite the same degree that the CCP is. Oh, really? Let's look at one metric: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries#:~:text=The%20incarceration%20rate%20of%20the,100%2C000%20(as%20of%202015) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_.... overall incarceration rate in the US is 639 per 100,000 The incarceration rate of the People's Republic of China varies depending on sources and measures. According to the World Prison Brief, the rate for only sentenced prisoners is 118 per 100,000 (as of 2015) WTH is going on here?
  - ulfw 5y ago
    I am sorry what else is Facebook???
- adventured 5y ago
  That's never going to happen. TikTok is already losing engagement in the US. The TikTok problem is that there are only so many cloned dances to do and very short form video is overwhelmingly low value garbage. Ever look at the TikTok channels for prominent celebrities? The content is horrible. It's embarrassing to look at their channels. It's inherent to the format. The sole thing propping up TikTok in the US - which is already beginning to fade - is the popularity of young people cloning mediocre dance routines. There is only so far for that one trick pony to go, it becomes increasingly boring with time. Facebook persists as the telephone that every house has, along with its protective moat in Instagram. TikTok has no persistence reason to exist long-term. It's far easier to build the next fad social network than it is to replace something perma entrenched like Facebook. The over 30 crowd is the majority of social media users in the US, they aren't going to abandon Facebook, it's set (exactly the same way Google is in search); young people however will abandon TikTok for the next cool trinket social media app as they get increasingly bored with TikTok and desperate for something new and cool to play with.
  - _fzslm 5y ago
    > The sole thing propping up TikTok in the US - which is already beginning to fade - is the popularity of young people cloning mediocre dance routines. There is only so far for that one trick pony to go, it becomes increasingly boring with time. for the first 15 minutes, sure. once TikTok starts to understand what kind of content you're interested in (and it does this quite quickly), this problem disappears. i can't remember the last time i saw content like that. it's almost like the difference between YouTube signed out vs signed in.
yftsui 5y ago
Nobody use BAT anymore, Baidu has been a 2nd tier company for at least 5 years and nobody refer it in the acronyms. The top 5 are Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial, ByteDance, Meituan or PDD
- swyx 5y ago
  seen any good analyses of what happened at Baidu? how do you screw up being "The Google of China"? (I know "X of China" is never actually true but work with me)
  - izgzhen 5y ago
    Google is still relevant because it controls Android and Chrome. Baidu never gets lucky in building that and be a dominant player. This makes it very passive in the mobile internet market competition.
  - rfoo 5y ago
    Web search is not very profitable ever since the so-called "mobile age". A large percentage of mobile-only users have stopped relying on search, they reach to WeChat or just 100 different specific apps instead. Baidu was in desperate for growing or even keeping its ads revenue then, and they did something really bad which triggered a PR storm [1], making things worse. Also, around 2016-2017 most of my engineer friends who are great at their job left Baidu for, surprise, ByteDance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi
- xvector 5y ago
  How would you say ByteDance compares to the other four?
- miguelrochefort 5y ago
  1. Ant Group is an affiliate of Alibaba. 2. Is Meituan that big? 3. I have never heard of PDD. 4. What about Xiaomi and Huawei?
  - 5y ago
deadcoder0904 5y ago
Where did you get this data from?
- miguelrochefort 5y ago
  I filled it myself using Google to find projects I wasn’t aware of.
yhoneycomb 5y ago
It bothers me that the acronym is two non-words. I propose X-BATH
- abledon 5y ago
  I'm reading as a Corona reference BatxH where H = Human, x = multiplier sign
specialist 5y ago
I highly recommend http://acquired.fm http://acquired.fm podcast. They cover these companies and many others. Being a grey beard, their episode on Tencent and the freemium business model kinda blew my mind.
- miguelrochefort 5y ago
  Thanks, I just subscribed.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

I'm guessing there's some internal pressure. He's probably going to get a year off and then a cushy role in the party.

blueblisters 5y ago

TikTok will surpass Facebook as the most engaging social media app in the US with fewer DAUs than Facebook. It's already at par [1] according to some data. ByteDance might become the most valuable company in the world, not just in China. [1] https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1394704798591590401?s=20 https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak/status/1394704798591590401?s...

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
That's a prediction and a half. It would only become the most valuable company if the stock market goes crazy about it, as it stands, one does not become that with just a mobile app / social network.
- xvector 5y ago
  Still, it will be an incredibly valuable company, especially as the Chinese middle class comes into wealth.
  - gogopuppygogo 5y ago
    China seems to be aging faster than the middle class can get wealthy. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/chinas-aging-population-is-bigger-problem-than-one-child-policy-economists.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/chinas-aging-population-is-b...
    - eunos 5y ago
      The older folks were not educated (less than 10% with college degree). The young people are much more (close to 30%). Besides, close to 40% pop lives in rural.
    - nomay 5y ago
      I've come to realize that the inherent advantage to the China system is that it can dispose of people at will, it doesn't need to care about your feel and whether you want to be in the loser pack, all in the grand name of the greater good. That makes it nimble, and powerful, that means the system itself almost always wins, as for the people, well, good luck.
      - elefanten 5y ago
        The CCP runs an arbitrage. It is willing to destroy any citizen’s life — to deprive, to immiserate, to extract - in exchange for marginally better systemic performance for the party state. Most other modern governments just aren’t willing and able to use and abuse their citizens to quite the same degree that the CCP is. And with a lot of expendable people + total control, you can drive some fast results. But this is also why the world needs to firmly reject such unethical governance plays, by banding together to shun and decouple from any ruling elite that tries to run them.
        justicezyx 5y ago
        > Most other modern governments just aren’t willing and able to use and abuse their citizens to quite the same degree that the CCP is. Oh, really? Let's look at one metric: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries#:~:text=The%20incarceration%20rate%20of%20the,100%2C000%20(as%20of%202015) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_.... overall incarceration rate in the US is 639 per 100,000 The incarceration rate of the People's Republic of China varies depending on sources and measures. According to the World Prison Brief, the rate for only sentenced prisoners is 118 per 100,000 (as of 2015) WTH is going on here?
- ulfw 5y ago
  I am sorry what else is Facebook???
adventured 5y ago
That's never going to happen. TikTok is already losing engagement in the US. The TikTok problem is that there are only so many cloned dances to do and very short form video is overwhelmingly low value garbage. Ever look at the TikTok channels for prominent celebrities? The content is horrible. It's embarrassing to look at their channels. It's inherent to the format. The sole thing propping up TikTok in the US - which is already beginning to fade - is the popularity of young people cloning mediocre dance routines. There is only so far for that one trick pony to go, it becomes increasingly boring with time. Facebook persists as the telephone that every house has, along with its protective moat in Instagram. TikTok has no persistence reason to exist long-term. It's far easier to build the next fad social network than it is to replace something perma entrenched like Facebook. The over 30 crowd is the majority of social media users in the US, they aren't going to abandon Facebook, it's set (exactly the same way Google is in search); young people however will abandon TikTok for the next cool trinket social media app as they get increasingly bored with TikTok and desperate for something new and cool to play with.
- _fzslm 5y ago
  > The sole thing propping up TikTok in the US - which is already beginning to fade - is the popularity of young people cloning mediocre dance routines. There is only so far for that one trick pony to go, it becomes increasingly boring with time. for the first 15 minutes, sure. once TikTok starts to understand what kind of content you're interested in (and it does this quite quickly), this problem disappears. i can't remember the last time i saw content like that. it's almost like the difference between YouTube signed out vs signed in.

yftsui 5y ago

Nobody use BAT anymore, Baidu has been a 2nd tier company for at least 5 years and nobody refer it in the acronyms. The top 5 are Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial, ByteDance, Meituan or PDD

swyx 5y ago
seen any good analyses of what happened at Baidu? how do you screw up being "The Google of China"? (I know "X of China" is never actually true but work with me)
- izgzhen 5y ago
  Google is still relevant because it controls Android and Chrome. Baidu never gets lucky in building that and be a dominant player. This makes it very passive in the mobile internet market competition.
- rfoo 5y ago
  Web search is not very profitable ever since the so-called "mobile age". A large percentage of mobile-only users have stopped relying on search, they reach to WeChat or just 100 different specific apps instead. Baidu was in desperate for growing or even keeping its ads revenue then, and they did something really bad which triggered a PR storm [1], making things worse. Also, around 2016-2017 most of my engineer friends who are great at their job left Baidu for, surprise, ByteDance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wei_Zexi
xvector 5y ago
How would you say ByteDance compares to the other four?
miguelrochefort 5y ago
1. Ant Group is an affiliate of Alibaba. 2. Is Meituan that big? 3. I have never heard of PDD. 4. What about Xiaomi and Huawei?
- 5y ago

deadcoder0904 5y ago

Where did you get this data from?

miguelrochefort 5y ago
I filled it myself using Google to find projects I wasn’t aware of.

yhoneycomb 5y ago

It bothers me that the acronym is two non-words. I propose X-BATH

abledon 5y ago
I'm reading as a Corona reference BatxH where H = Human, x = multiplier sign

specialist 5y ago

I highly recommend http://acquired.fm http://acquired.fm podcast. They cover these companies and many others. Being a grey beard, their episode on Tencent and the freemium business model kinda blew my mind.

miguelrochefort 5y ago
Thanks, I just subscribed.