TikTok owner ByteDance gathers 1 billion monthly active users across its apps
- The Beijing-based new media giant counts deep-pocketed investors such as SoftBank among its backers
- However, TikTok’s rapid international growth has thrown up a number of regulatory hurdles for ByteDance
The world’s most valuable unicorn ByteDance said its apps, including short video app Douyin (known as Tik Tok outside mainland China), gathered a total of 1 billion monthly active users globally as of this January.
Douyin president Zhang Nan announced the number at the Shanghai Film Festival this week, and the figures were later confirmed by a ByteDance spokeswoman.
The Beijing-based new media giant counts deep-pocketed investors such as SoftBank among its backers. It secured an estimated US$76 billion valuation in its most recent funding round last year.
The company, which also operates news app Jinri Toutiao which translates as “Today’s Headlines” in English, relies mostly on advertising revenue generated from its core content business.
Short-video sharing platform TikTok – where users can watch as well as create short videos with music, stickers and animation as special effects – has become a global hit, helped the company to expand its reach.
Total installations of TikTok are estimated to be 1.2 billion worldwide, according to industry researcher Sensor Tower. It predicted the app’s gross revenue mark will surpass US$100 billion later this month.
