Bytedance, the Chinese owner of the video app TikTok, had two billion users across all its platforms by the end of 2020, reports The Wall Street Journal Thursday based on an internal mail from the company. In addition to TikTok, the company has also Duyin the Chinese version of the videoapp, and the news app Jinri Toutiao.
ByteDance does not share its number of users per app, but most likely the majority is on TikTok. In China, TikTok is considered one of the most successful export products. The app was downloaded over 240 million times in the United States alone.
With its two billion users, Bytedance also enters the waters of competitor YouTube, which announced in April that about as many people log in daily to watch videos.
TikTok is an app that is especially popular among young people. They make short videos where they dance or sing along to famous songs and share them with their friends.
ByteDance considering going public
ByteDance had a turnover of 34.3 billion dollars (28.7 billion euros) over the whole of 2020, which is 111 percent more than a year earlier. At the same time, there was a net loss of $ 45 billion, but according to ByteDance, especially accounting purposes.
Because the company raised money in 2020, it had to include a number of additional costs in its books. Bytedance made Gross $ 19 billion profit, 93 percent more than in 2019. The company gets its main revenue from advertisements.
ByteDance is currently worth about $ 180 billion and is considering an IPO. It is not yet known when and in which country it would take place.
Last year, Bytedance ran into a clash with then US president Donald Trump. It categorized TikTok as a national security threat, along with a lot of other Chinese companies, and wanted to block the app in the US. In the end, he did not succeed, and the new President Joe Biden finally crossed the line this month.