ByteDance
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| Company type | Privately held company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet |
| Founded | March 2012 |
| Founder | Yiming Zhang |
| Headquarters | , |
Areas served | China (2012-2015); Worldwide (2015-present) |
| Products | Jinri Toutiao |
| Website | www |
Bytedance (Chinese: 字节跳动) is an Internet technology company operating several machine learning-enabled content platforms[1].
Bytedance’s core product, Jinri Toutiao (“今日头条” in Chinese, literally meaning “Today’s Headlines”, also known as “Toutiao”, “头条”in Chinese), is a popular content platform in China[2][3]. 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 also runs several short-form video apps such as musical.ly, Tik Tok, BuzzVideo and Vigo Video.
As of November 2017, Bytedance has over 200 million daily active users across all of its content platforms[4].
Company History
Bytedance was founded by Yiming Zhang, a serial entrepreneur since early on in his professional career. After graduating from Nankai University, Zhang joined a Chinese search engine company that focused on flights and hotels called Kuxun . Kuxun was subsequently acquired by Tripadvisor[5].
Creation of Toutiao (2012)
Zhang's personal experiences motivated him to find better ways to access information. For example, in 2008, to tackle the challenge of buying train tickets during holiday seasons[6][7] , Zhang created a program that checked the availability of train tickets automatically. Half an hour after completing the program, he received a notice by SMS and bought a ticket successfully.
In 2011, Zhang noticed that fewer and fewer people were reading newspapers. At the same time, smartphone sales in China were soaring. Zhang capitalized on this growth in the usage of mobile devices and incorporated AI technology into a product that aimed to transform how information is being consumed[8]. The first version of Toutiao was launched in August 2012[9], five months after Zhang founded Bytedance. It was a simple mobile-only news app but with two features that people had not seen before in China: 1) stories were pushed to users rather than the users needing to search for keywords or find accounts to follow[10]; 2) the more users clicked on content, the more Toutiao learned their tastes and interests, and refined its recommendations[11][12]. Toutiao quickly accumulated large numbers of downloads and hit 1 million DAU only four months after its launch[13].
Development: from Content Aggregation to Creation and Discovery (2013-2014)
From 2013, Toutiao expanded to offer content in more categories and formats. In January 2014, the company created the “Toutiaohao” (“头条号” in Chinese) platform to attract more PGC (professionally generated content) and UGC (user generated content) creators; and later in the year, added video capabilities. As its creator community grew, Toutiao used interest-based and decentralized distribution to help long-tail content creators find an audience. An often cited example[14] is “Zhuguan Baba”, a young pig farmer in Northern China whose posts on how to raise pigs attracted millions of readers on Toutiao[15].
To encourage more individual or small-team creators to use its platform, Toutiao also launched incentive programs in 2014. These programs ranged from offering office space and tools, to guaranteeing minimum monthly incomes upon meeting key targets such as read rates and number of articles[13]. Earlier in 2014, Toutiao began monetizing via advertising.
Diversification and Globalization (2015-2017)
Short-form Video Platforms
Between 2015-2017, the company rolled out and acquired a series of short-form video apps, including: Xigua Video (“西瓜视频” in Chinese, formerly known as “Toutiao Video”), BuzzVideo (formerly “TopBuzz Video”), Huoshan (“火山” in Chinese, international version: Vigo Video), musical.ly, and others.
Extending Global Reach
As of 2018, Bytedance has a global footprint, with operations in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, Brazil, and India[16].
August 2015: Bytedance launched TopBuzz, a content platform for videos, articles, breaking news and GIFs in the U.S. and later in Brazil in 2016[17].
September 2016: Bytedance launched PGC short video platform TopBuzz Video in Japan[18].
October 2016: Bytedance invested in India’s largest vernacular content aggregation platform Dailyhunt[19].
December 2016: Bytedance acquired a controlling stake in the Indonesian news recommendation platform BABE[20].
February 2017: Bytedance acquired Flipagram[21], a US-based popular short-form video app.
July 2017: Bytedance launched UGC short video platform Hypstar (now Vigo Video) in Southeast Asia[22].
November 2017: Bytedance acquired global news app News Republic[19] and global video community musical.ly[23].
Technology
The Underlying AI Technology
Machine learning algorithms are utilized in Bytedance's products to source and push content users find most interesting. This underlying technology learns users’ feedback and preferences through their interactions - time spent on each article, time of the day the user reads, pauses, comments, dislikes, and favourites. The engagement data from active users is fed into Bytedance’s algorithms, further refining the quality and relevance of content distributed to users. As a result, each user has a personalized content feed[13]. This AI technology has differentiated Bytedance's apps in China’s mobile Internet market, and the underlying tech also can be applied in international markets because it isn’t limited by linguistic or cultural barriers[24].
Computer vision technology such as object recognition is also used to automatically tag and understand videos and images in order to facilitate recommendations across different languages[16].
AI technologies are also applied to content creation activities. For example, the machine learning system helps creators predict viral content by comparing incoming articles with previous content that was widely popular[25].
In 2016, Bytedance’s AI Lab and Peking University co-developed Xiaomingbot, an artificial intelligence writing bot that writes its own news article. The bot published 450 articles during the 15-day Summer Olympics. In general, Xiaomingbot published stories approximately two seconds after the event ended[13].
In December 2017, Bytedance was included on the CBInsight AI 100 list, a list of 100 of the most prominent private companies applying artificial intelligence algorithms[26]. In February 2018, Bytedance was named to Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative Companies, ranking #16[27] globally and #4 in the China Top 10 list[28], Bytedance was commended for its use of artificial intelligence to provide news and content.
The AI Lab
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[29]. 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[30]. 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[31].
Products
Toutiao
Toutiao delivers content recommendations to every user based on their interests. By analyzing the features of content, users and users’ interaction with content, the algorithms generate a tailored feed of content for each user[32].
In February 2016, a missing person alerts project was started on the Toutiao platform. In 2017, the alerts helped find 3,573 missing persons[33].
Xigua Video
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. [34].
musical.ly is a short-form video community that enables users to share 15-60 second videos. Users can shoot, edit and post videos on the musical.ly app to express themselves through singing, dancing, and many other talents. In December 2017, musical.ly officially joined Bytedance[35].
TopBuzz
TopBuzz is the international version of Toutiao, a content aggregation and recommendation mobile platform that delivers videos, articles, GIFs and breaking news to users worldwide[12].
News Republic
News Republic is a news and video aggregator with daily breaking news and headlines from over 2,300 media partners in 47 countries and 43 languages[36]. In November 2017, Bytedance acquired News Republic from Cheetah Mobile[37].
Other products
Bytedance has also developed or invested in a series of other content products, including Huoshan (known as Vigo Video outside China), BABE and others[38].
References
- ^ Wang, Yue. "China's $11 Billion News Aggregator Jinri Toutiao Is No Fake".
- ^ "How a News Startup Caught China's Tencent by Surprise". The Information.
- ^ "This Startup Is Luring Top Talent With $3 Million Pay Packages". 24 September 2017 – via www.bloomberg.com.
- ^ "Toutiao and beyond: How Bytedance will keep making global headlines · TechNode". 1 December 2017.
- ^ "TripAdvisor acquires Kuxun.cn - Travel Industry News & Conferences - EyeforTravel testing". www.eyefortravel.com.
- ^ "张一鸣告诉你如何把事情搞大？". cj.sina.com.cn.
- ^ https://www.chinaventure.com.cn/cmsmodel/news/detail/298069.shtml
- ^ "今日头条创始人张一鸣：创业，需要你耐心等待努力的事情逐步发生".
- ^ "Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem". www.techinasia.com.
- ^ Wang, Yue. "China's $11 Billion News Aggregator Jinri Toutiao Is No Fake".
- ^ "对话今日头条创始人：1亿美元融资背后的故事".
- ^ a b Knight, Will. "This Chinese media giant is using machine learning to go after Facebook's lunch".
- ^ a b c d Hariharan, Anu. "The Hidden Forces Behind Toutiao: China's Content King".
- ^ Tone, Sixth (8 November 2016). "How a 24-Year-Old Blogger Became China's Pig Whisperer".
- ^ Yuan, Li (24 August 2017). "The News Reads You in China—and People Can't Get Enough of It" – via www.wsj.com.
- ^ a b "Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem". www.techinasia.com.
- ^ http://data.cmcm.com/report/detail/152
- ^ "無料動画アプリTopBuzz Video コンテンツ提供者を募集". japan.cnet.com.
- ^ a b "Ambitious new media firm ByteDance is no longer a secret outside of China – TechCrunch". techcrunch.com.
- ^ "Toutiao Pushes Short Video Business Globalization With USD1 Billion Musical.ly Takeover". Yicai Global.
- ^ "Toutiao, a Chinese news app that's making headlines". The Economist.
- ^ "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.
- ^ Spangler, Todd (10 November 2017). "Beijing's Bytedance Steps Up Global Video and Entertainment Profile With Musical.ly Buy, Live.me Funding".
- ^ "How a Little-Known Startup Became a Tech Behemoth". The Information.
- ^ "Toutiao is making fake news to train its anti-fake news AI · TechNode". 7 December 2017.
- ^ "AI 100: The Artificial Intelligence Startups Redefining Industries". 12 December 2017.
- ^ "The 2018 World's Most Innovative Companies - Fast Company".
- ^ "The 2018 Top 10 Most Innovative Companies by Sector: China - Fast Company".
- ^ "Subscribe to read". Financial Times.
{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help) - ^ Knight, Will. "This Chinese media giant is using machine learning to go after Facebook's lunch".
- ^ "围剿与反围剿 BAT大战今日头条_第一财经". www.yicai.com.
- ^ http://blog.ycombinator.com/the-hidden-forces-behind-toutiao-chinas-content-king/
- ^ http://www.scmp.com/tech/social-gadgets/article/2133363/migrant-worker-lost-his-56-year-old-mentally-ill-sibling-during
- ^ "西瓜视频上线，今日头条视频布局呈鼎立之势". www.sohu.com. 8 June 2017.
- ^ Spangler, Todd (19 December 2017). "Musical.ly Establishes $50 Million Creator Fund, Closes Deal With China's Bytedance".
- ^ "Cheetah Mobile launches Open Feed content-sharing platform". 28 February 2017.
- ^ "China's Toutiao buys teen-favourite video creation app Musical.ly".
- ^ "Toutiao pockets $1 billion on the road to becoming China's next BAT · TechNode". 7 April 2017.