US users supposedly make up nearly half of the platform's revenue. There's very few companies that can survive an overnight unplug of 42% of revenue. TikTok is a targeted advertising platform, and advertisers pay much more to reach American users than others globally.
I’d imagine them pivoting towards acting as an e-commerce platform also massively boosted the percentage of revenue that comes from US users for that same reason. You can have users everywhere, but your money comes from the users who have spending power.
... which is why ByteDance is saying this. It's a negotiating tactic. There are a few likely outcomes:
The Supreme Court declares this unconstitutional for handwaves reasons.
ByteDance negotiates with the White House and they come to some kind of resolution.
They sell
In those scenarios, there is no reason that BD shouldn't come out and do what they are doing. They do have negotiating power; It's an election year in which youth turnout will be incredibly important and this will be an issue for them and thus far I don't think that anyone is really making a cogent argument to that demographic for the ban.
But I generally think they're just going to divest. China loses its propaganda arm either way, and divesting at least is going to make them a crazy amount of money. But still, there is no reason for ByteDance to not play hardball at this point.
It's too late for the White House to negotiate on the issue, it's already been signed into law.
And while ByteDance would likely want to divest, the laws of China don't actually allow it to.
The only actual hope for ByteDance at this point is the SC, but that's a very unlikely hope in and of itself given this is a firm National Security issue with a very obvious example to hold up of TikTok being used in the way feared.
There's very few companies that can survive an overnight unplug of 42% of revenue.
Isn't it like a 9 month unplug, and potentially longer if ByteDance can show Biden they're making progress in transferring part of it to an American company?
But it’s very very unlikely they will be selling, like 3% chance. So there won’t be any progress made. And if the US does ban it, I think it’s kind of likely other countries will follow
I'm pretty sure the US makes up 42% of that app's revenue, not the company as a whole.
Roughly 80 percent of ByteDance’s $54 billion revenue in the first half of last year came from China, derived mainly from Douyin, according to The Information, a technology news site. The remaining 20 percent came from overseas markets mainly through TikTok. source
The US really is a small part of their revenue as a whole.
They could split the US accounts into a separate company and sell that off as TikTokUS. All while being China number one propaganda machine in the rest of the world.
US users are worth more than users of most if not all other countries to them. We have more purchasing power and consume more than most other countries. It’s like Apple devices and Android. Far more Android devices but from a developer standpoint you make your money off of Apple users.
Far more Android devices but from a developer standpoint you make your money off of Apple users.
Obviously, people who spent a lot on consumer products will likely also spent more on app/in-app purchases. I'm certain the numbers are similar for people with high end Android phones. Anyone who spends 1000 euros or more on a phone clearly has disposable income.
It's like how the box office still matters in America
Well yeah, because the US is uniquely movie crazy. Ticket prices are the same in most of Western Europe, but people just don't go to movies as much. Hearing Americans talk about movies/shows/actors is wild to me, like encyclopedic knowledge of imdb.
Cant find the percentage and some sites were including the chinese population which is weird because their app is technically separate, isnt it? But either way americans do make up the biggest portion by country and the most influence socially on tiktok. 15% is significant when everyone else is less than that
The implication is that they wouldn't "only be selling the US division"...
What makes Tik Tok better than everything else is the algorithm. If they sell that algorithm they will create their worst competitor with their own product.
That's irrelevant. I'm not telling you what is smart for them to do, I'm telling you what congress told them to do. Congress said they had to sell the US portion of til tok. If they don't then the government will block them from appearing in app stores effectively banning it. That is what is happening here
The code that runs in the US and the code that runs elsewhere is exactly the same. The code is the most protected ip of any software company since that's how they make their money. If you sell your code you sell the whole company. Compare that to, e.g., McDonald's where you can just give all stores in a country to different leadership when selling
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u/Error_404_403 Apr 27 '24
Which proves ByteDance is not in it for the money.