Since launching in 2016, TikTok, a wildly popular short-video app used mainly by teens and 20-somethings, has “spawned its own industry”, creating a new generation of social-media stars and handing an estimated $33bn fortune to Zhang Yiming – the 37-year-old software engineer who founded its parent company, ByteDance, says The Sunday Times. It has also become “a political tool” capable of humiliating the US president. Ahead of his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month, Donald Trump bragged about receiving “1m RSVPs” – only to be confronted with rows of empty seats, notes CNN. “Many of those who asked for tickets” appear to have been “trolling the president – in a stunt organised mainly through TikTok”.
Riling the American president
Washington is now threatening a crackdown, indicating it may follow India’s example and ban Chinese social-media apps, including TikTok, on security grounds. You should only download TikTok, secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned Americans this week, “if you want your private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party”. Zhang and his company are adamant that Beijing has no influence on its operation, notes the Financial Times. But in the current tense environment, keeping “both the US and China happy sounds like one impossible dance routine”. Does he have the mettle to pull it off?
Some reckon that TikTok’s “light-hearted nonsense” disguises “the blindingly ambitious designs of one man bent on changing the world”, says The Sunday Times. Born in 1983, the son of civil servants, Zhang has always been a man on the move. Cutting his teeth after university at a series of tech start-ups, Zhang briefly joined Microsoft in China before setting up his own company, ByteDance, from an apartment in Beijing in 2012. Its first product, the news aggregation app Toutiao, was powered by “recommendation algorithms” tracking users’ behaviour across thousands of sites. TikTok (named Douyin in the Chinese market), which followed in 2016, deployed much the same technology. Data analyst CB Insights describes ByteDance’s algorithms as its “secret sauce”. Others reckon Zhang is peddling spyware. According to Reddit’s boss, Steve Huffman, the company’s ability to track users’ behaviour around the web is “truly terrifying”.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Boundless ambitions
One thing that’s certain is that Zhang is “a tough taskmaster” with a strange way of enforcing creativity and discipline, says The Sunday Times. “He requires executives to make their own TikTok videos” and “if their creations don’t obtain a sufficient number of ‘likes’, makes them do press-ups.” Employees are barred from talking to the press and Zhang himself rarely does interviews. In a rare outing last year, he hinted at his drive: “We must work harder, we must also be more perfectionist”. And indeed, his “ambitions seem boundless”. TikTok has turned ByteDance into “the world’s most valuable start-up” (its value is estimated to have doubled in a year to around $140bn) and the company seems to have plenty more in reserve, including 20 other apps and a smartphone.
When Zhang recently poached a top Disney executive, Kevin Mayer, to run the show in America, he observed his empire was heading “to the next level”. It was a shrewd PR move, but events are moving quickly – and that boast is now hanging in the balance.
-
Elon Musk enters the White House – what happens now?Elon Musk has achieved the seemingly impossible many times before in the business world. But will he be able to cut the US government down to size?
-
Sri Mulyani Indrawati: Indonesia’s Iron LadyKeeping Sri Mulyani Indrawati on as Indonesia's finance minister has steadied the ship after the election of a former military general spooked financial markets
-
Media mogul James Dolan takes straight shot at the limelightControversial media mogul James Dolan has been hailed as a visionary for his Sphere arena in Las Vegas. But can he square the circle financially?
-
Do we need central banks, or is it time to privatise money?Analysis Free banking is one alternative to central banks, but would switching to a radical new system be worth the risk?
-
Byju’s – the startling rise and fallIndia’s educational technology start-up Byju's attracted big-name backers and soared to vertiginous heights during Covid. It has now plummeted. What happened?
-
Indian magnate Ratan Tata dies at 86 – how he made a mark in the UKRatan Tata took the helm of the family business in 1991 and transformed it into an international conglomerate worth $365bn. His death plunged India into mourning
-
Jimmy Carter makes history as the first former US president to turn 100When Jimmy Carter left office, few would have predicted an outbreak of national affection for the former president’s 100th birthday four decades later. But his legacy is worth celebrating
-
Eric Adams: the New York City mayor charged with corruptionControversy and accusations of corruption have followed Eric Adams in his rise to the mayoralty of New York City. Now he has been charged with a federal crime.
