TikTok: Time running out for inventive ByteDance boss
The Chinese billionaire behind teen phenomenon TikTok is a 37-year-old tech guru whose eye for youth trends has blasted the iphone app to global success-but his inventiveness might not exactly be enough to save the company’s lucrative US market.
Zhang Yiming finds himself under enormous pressure as he tries to assure the world that TikTok is safe and sound, while also protecting his image in the home by not appearing to provide directly into demands from the West.
An offshoot of Zhang’s ByteDance startup, TikTok’s kaleidoscopic feeds of short videos feature from hair dye tutorials to dance routines and jokes about lifestyle.
It is the international version of ByteDance’s domestic Douyin app, and the separation of both shows the way the canny Zhang has tried to play the free-wheeling global market while also staying on the proper side of China’s strict internet authorities.
The try to have a foot in both camps is looking increasingly precarious, however, as TikTok tries to thread its way through rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Zhang has been given just six weeks to locate a buyer for the software in the usa or have it banned in its second biggest market.
ByteDance has taken Zhang-a programmer before he became a businessman-to the highest echelons of China’s billionaire club, surpassing many more-established tech tycoons.
Analysts at Tokyo-based Akita Michinoku Capital estimate that this past year the company a lot more than doubled its 2018 earnings of around $7.4 billion, adding it was learning to be a “viable competitor” to Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet.
Two billion downloads
TikTok was designed on the trunk of Zhang’s pioneering utilization of artificial intelligence, which earlier found success in China with the flagship news aggregation iphone app Jinri Toutiao.
A number of local and foreign acquisitions followed, nonetheless it was the launch of TikTok that basically took the company to another level.
It's been downloaded over two billion times worldwide since it launched three years ago, with India and the united states forming the most notable two international markets.
ByteDance now has over 60,000 staff in 30 countries, and in March Zhang said these were seeking to recruit around 40,000 more-bringing it near the headcount of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
The business also announced plans Thursday for its first data centre for European users, to be setup in Ireland.
But TikTok’s meteoric rise has been interrupted this year as the business found itself a casualty of China’s worsening global relationships.
It lost one massive market after New Delhi banned the iphone app carrying out a bloody border clash between Indian and Chinese troops in the northeast.
And like telecom giant Huawei, it came under scrutiny after concerns that ByteDance could possibly be forced to share user information with Chinese intelligence.
The business insists it hasn't provided user data to the Chinese government-and wouldn’t regardless if asked.
Still, President Donald Trump demanded this month that the united states procedures of TikTok be sold within six weeks to an American company, or it will be shut down.
Strong-arm tactics
It isn't clear what effect this might have on the rest of its international operations, but Washington has largely succeeded in strong-arming all of those other world into spurning Huawei and its own 5G technology.
Even if Zhang agrees to market TikTok and pocket a fortune, he faces anger in the home as some nationalistic voices in China have begun calling for a boycott of ByteDance if he lets that happen.
“A big challenge for ByteDance is that its rise coincides with growing tensions between China and the United States,” said Zhiqun Zhu, chair of the international relations department at Bucknell University in america.
“It has become a victim of the US-China technological competition.”
While Microsoft has emerged as a contender to purchase its services in america, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, any sale looks definately not certain.
In any event, TikTok is not going down without a fight.
The business this week restated its intend to become a “global company” and to re-establish TikTok’s headquarters beyond your US.
“TikTok has always operated as a worldwide enterprise with its leadership team operating out of multiple markets all over the world beyond China,” a company spokeswoman said.
“We expect that to keep for the foreseeable future.”
