TikTok seems emblematic of China's overall approach compared to the West - shows up late to the party, but studies all those hard-won lessons to copy and later surpass the most successful Western products. The free market is great at finding the superior product, but it's also messy and wasteful with all those failed attempts - why not just sit it out until a winner starts to emerge, then copy them? China seems to have perfected the art of the fast follower.
Tiktok is very much a product of the 'free market' segment in China. The government does have a minority ownership stake in it now, but that's very recent and they played no role in it's founding by Zhang Yiming, a programmer and serial app and online service founder.
Yeah, my understanding is that the recommendation engine was already developed for a news app popular in India, and that they grafted this onto Musical.ly (the acquisition which has now become TikTok).
Also, they spent many, many millions on ads to get the app everywhere.
many, many millions can be approximately equal to 1bn. I am aware that they advertised a lot, but didn't have (and wouldn't trust) any figures provided on this, as I've seen how wrong they can be.
no different than SV itself. How many Clubhouse clones did we have exactly, not to mention just about every established giant suddenly coming up with 'spaces' and 'stage channels'?
That's always been the game, inside and outside of countries.
