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ByteDance

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ByteDance Ltd
Native name
字节跳动
Company typePrivately held company
IndustryInternet
FoundedMarch 2012; 12 years ago (2012-03)
FounderZhang Yiming
Headquarters
Beijing
,
China
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsToutiao
TikTok
BuzzVideo
Vigo Video
Websitewww.bytedance.com

ByteDance Ltd (Chinese: 字节跳动; pinyin: Zìjié Tiàodòng) is a Chinese Internet technology company operating several machine learning-enabled content platforms, headquartered in Beijing.[1][2] It was founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012.

ByteDance's core product, Toutiao ("Headlines"), is a content platform in China and worldwide.[3][4] Toutiao started out as a news recommendation engine and gradually evolved into a platform delivering content in a variety of formats, such as texts, images, question-and-answer posts, microblogs, and videos. Toutiao offers its users personalized information feeds that are powered by machine learning algorithms. A content feed is updated based on what the machine learns about a user’s reading preferences.

ByteDance acquired music start-up musical.ly and combined it with Douyin into a single application under the TikTok name. It also runs BuzzVideo and Vigo Video.

ByteDance had over 800 million daily active users (over 1 billion accumulated users) across all of its content platforms as of November 2018.[5][6] The company was valued at $78 billion as of November 2018 and is considered one of the most valuable unicorns in the world.[7] The company is backed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, SoftBank Group, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, and Hillhouse Capital Group.[8]

Products

Neihan Duanzi

In March 2012, ByteDance launched its first app called Neihan Duanzi (内涵段子). This app allowed users to circulates jokes, memes, and humorous videos. At its peak, Neihan Duanzi had over 200 million users in 2017.[9]

On 10 April 2018, ByteDance permanently sunset 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”.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12][13][14]

Toutiao

The first version of Toutiao was launched in August 2012,[15] five months after Zhang founded ByteDance. Toutiao hit 1 million DAU four months after its launch.[16]

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”, a young pig farmer in Northern China whose posts on how to raise pigs attracted millions of readers on Toutiao.[17][18]

In February 2016, a missing person alerts project was started on the Toutiao platform. In 2017, the alerts helped find 3,573 missing persons.[19]

In March 2016, ByteDance launched Toutiao Video, which was later rebranded as Xigua Video. Xigua Video is a short video platform that hosts a variety of video clips that are on average 2–5 minutes long.[20]

In August 2019, Bytedance launches Toutiao Search as a part of it's Toutiao portal - a news aggregator.[21]

Other products

ByteDance launched TopBuzz in August 2015, a content platform for videos, articles, breaking news and GIFs in the U.S. and later in Brazil in 2016.[22] ByteDance launched PGC short video platform TopBuzz Video in Japan in September 2016.[23] In October 2016, ByteDance invested in India’s largest vernacular content aggregation platform Dailyhunt.[24] In December 2016, ByteDance invested in Indonesian news recommendation platform BABE.[25]

In February 2017, ByteDance acquired Flipagram.[26] In July 2017, ByteDance launched UGC short video platform Hypstar (Vigo Video) in Southeast Asia.[27] In November 2017, ByteDance acquired global news app News Republic and global video community musical.ly.[24][28] 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.[8][29]

In November 2017, ByteDance acquired News Republic from Cheetah Mobile.[30]

Technology

The Underlying AI Technology

In 2016, ByteDance’s AI Lab and Peking University co-developed Xiaomingbot, an artificial intelligence writing bot that writes news articles. The bot published 450 articles during the 15-day Summer Olympics. In general, Xiaomingbot published stories approximately two seconds after the event ended.[16]

ByteDance’s research arm, the AI lab was founded in March 2016 and is headed by Wei-Ying Ma, former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia.[31] 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.[32] Its main research areas include Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Speech and Audio, Knowledge and Data Mining, Distributed System and Networking, and Computer Graphics.[33]

Lawsuits

Huxiu

In December 2018, ByteDance sued Huxiu for defamation after Huxiu reported that ByteDance's Indian-language news app Helo was propagating misinformation.[34]

US Federal Trade Commission

On February 27, 2019, the FTC fined Musical.ly 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.[35][36] ByteDance responded by adding 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.[37]

References

  1. ^ "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.
  2. ^ "ByteDance". Bytedance.com.
  3. ^ Osawa, Juro (2017-07-19). "How a News Startup Caught China's Tencent by Surprise". The Information.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ^ "This Startup Is Luring Top Talent With $3 Million Pay Packages". Bloomberg. 24 September 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ "Twitter · Twitter". Twitter. 18 November 2018.
  6. ^ Lahiri, Tripti (2019-03-04). "Facebook finally has a serious Chinese rival". Quartz.
  7. ^ Steinberg, Julie; Lin, Liza (2018-08-07). "Beijing Bytedance Technology Seeks to Raise $3 Billion Privately". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  8. ^ a b Roumeliotis, Greg (November 1, 2019). "U.S. opens national security investigation into TikTok - sources". Reuters. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
  9. ^ "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. Retrieved 2019-06-18.
  10. ^ "Jokes app Neihan Duanzi shuttered by China's media regulator for 'vulgarity' | Society News". SupChina. 2018-04-12. Retrieved 2019-06-18.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ Pham, Sherisse (2018-11-02). "Why China's tech giants are cozying up to the Communist Party". CNN. Retrieved 2019-09-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ^ Fan, Jiayang (April 19, 2018). "Why China Cracked Down on the Social-Media Giant Bytedance". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 16, 2019.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ 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.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ a b Hariharan, Anu (2017-10-12). "The Hidden Forces Behind Toutiao: China's Content King". Y Combinator.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ Xueqing, Li (8 November 2016). "How a 24-Year-Old Blogger Became China's Pig Whisperer". Sixth Tone.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ Yuan, Li (2017-08-24). "The News Reads You in China—and People Can't Get Enough of It". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  19. ^ 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.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  20. ^ "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.
  21. ^ Saini, Jiya (2019-08-12). "Toutiao Search is online now, a search engine from ByteDance". Revyuh.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  22. ^ "2016 Chinese App Overseas Performance Report". Cheetah Data. 2016-12-13. Archived from the original on 2018-01-29. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
  23. ^ "無料動画アプリTopBuzz Video　コンテンツ提供者を募集". japan.cnet.com.
  24. ^ a b Russel, Jon (2017-11-10). "Ambitious new media firm ByteDance is no longer a secret outside of China – TechCrunch". TechCrunch.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  25. ^ "Toutiao Pushes Short Video Business Globalization With USD1 Billion Musical.ly Takeover". Yicai Global.
  26. ^ "Toutiao, a Chinese news app that's making headlines". The Economist. 2017-11-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  27. ^ "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.
  28. ^ Spangler, Todd (10 November 2017). "Beijing's ByteDance Steps Up Global Video and Entertainment Profile With Musical.ly Buy, Live.me Funding". Variety.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  29. ^ Harwell, Drew; Romm, Tony (November 1, 2019). "U.S. government investigating TikTok over national security concerns". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
  30. ^ Jing, Meng (2017-11-10). "China's Toutiao buys teen-favourite video creation app Musical.ly". South China Morning Post.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  31. ^ Feng, Emily (2017-05-09). "Toutiao touts AI for individual news in vast China market". The Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-11-12.
  32. ^ Knight, Will (2017-01-26). "This Chinese media giant is using machine learning to go after Facebook's lunch". MIT Technology Review.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  33. ^ "围剿与反围剿 BAT大战今日头条_第一财经". Yicai.com.
  34. ^ Liao, Rita (2018-12-19). "TikTok parent ByteDance sues Chinese news site that exposed fake news problem". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-03-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  35. ^ "Video Social Networking App Musical.ly Agrees to Settle FTC Allegations That it Violated Children's Privacy Law". Federal Trade Commission. 26 February 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  36. ^ Lieber, Chavie (28 February 2019). "TikTok has been illegally collecting children's data". Vox.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  37. ^ Lee, Dami (2019-02-27). "TikTok stops young users from uploading videos after FTC settlement". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
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