ByteDance has been making loads of money from Chinese domestic market, through TouDiao and DouYin. It knows in order to compete with big names such as Facebook, YouTube, it needs the North American market, which is known for all international brands. Basically winning the US market is winning the world, the same concept as being a Hollywood star is a international star.
I think people failed to understand TikTok. People keep talking about social network. TikTok is not a social network, it does not use your friends and your connections to predict what you will enjoy, and that's the beauty of it. For me TikTok is a TV. It is MTV, constantly showing you exciting videos, regardless where it come from. YouTube is like Cable TV. The closest to it is Instagram, but Instagram pays too much attention to who you follow. TikTok does not replace Facebook, but it will eat your TV time, it competes with Netflix.
DouYin, which is TikTok China, has totally transformed the Chinese e-commerce market. You know what it does, something very much similar to QVC, with Internet's low cost, it is eating up Alibaba's market share. Last year NEW ORIENTAL ED & TECHNOLOGY went bust after Chinese government forbids after-school education, the company set up accounts on DouYin, English teachers start to sell products on DouYin while they casually teaching online, it became a hit, they sold hundreds of millions GMV every month, you would be surprised to know hundreds of thousands people would log on DouYin every day to listen to what these guys talk about, and buy everything at the same time. It saved the whole company.
Just imagine how Facebook can invest 36b on metaverse. It is not hard for company to invest for future returns, that's how it works. ByteDance is not lack of money, it has investors pushing its doors to hand over money to them, and they are very profit organization already.
Spending $1b on ad is not exactly what they did, they invest $1b for contents (influencers), not pure ad.
Look man, what do you want anyone to say? ByteDance are private so we can't know for sure. Given the ARPU for Chinese users I've seen in various industries I find it entirely plausible that they paid for this out of profits.
I think people failed to understand TikTok. People keep talking about social network. TikTok is not a social network, it does not use your friends and your connections to predict what you will enjoy, and that's the beauty of it. For me TikTok is a TV. It is MTV, constantly showing you exciting videos, regardless where it come from. YouTube is like Cable TV. The closest to it is Instagram, but Instagram pays too much attention to who you follow. TikTok does not replace Facebook, but it will eat your TV time, it competes with Netflix.
DouYin, which is TikTok China, has totally transformed the Chinese e-commerce market. You know what it does, something very much similar to QVC, with Internet's low cost, it is eating up Alibaba's market share. Last year NEW ORIENTAL ED & TECHNOLOGY went bust after Chinese government forbids after-school education, the company set up accounts on DouYin, English teachers start to sell products on DouYin while they casually teaching online, it became a hit, they sold hundreds of millions GMV every month, you would be surprised to know hundreds of thousands people would log on DouYin every day to listen to what these guys talk about, and buy everything at the same time. It saved the whole company.