We don't often get a glimpse inside ByteDance, the secretive parent firm of the popular social media app TikTok. However, ByteDance reported last week that its sales increased to more than $34 billion last year.
ByteDance controls TikTok, also known as Douyin in China, as well as Toutiao (a Chinese news site), and has risen to become the most valuable start-up in the world.
Although its $34 billion in revenue is less than the $86 billion earned by social media behemoth Facebook last year, it's a pretty crazy figure when you realize that ByteDance was just formed in 2012. 2020 will be the company's ninth full year of performance. At the time, Facebook, which was famously launched in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room in 2004, was bringing in slightly more than $5 billion.
Even after accounting for inflation, ByteDance is expanding at an incredible rate. Apart from having some of the most addicting content and sharing mechanisms of any social media app, TikTok has been able to market itself on other major platforms, which is somewhat ironic. This has resulted in millions - if not billions - of dollars being spent on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other social media platforms.
Source: WSJ, Facebook, chartr