Their presence on TikTok highlights how important the platform has become in the daily lives of people in the US. Around half the US digital population and most people under the age of 30 use TikTok, with approximately 170mn users in the country. That popularity has underpinned the $268bn private valuation of ByteDance, which has remained China’s most valuable start-up for years. ByteDance sales are growing rapidly, with revenues reported to have more than doubled to more than $110bn last year The fact that the US, where lawmakers have raised concerns over national security, is one of its biggest revenue contributors is one factor that makes a listing of the company complicated. ByteDance has instead been repurchasing shares from its institutional investors, which own 60 per cent of the company and include Carlyle Group and General Atlantic, as a listing is pushed back. Yet in the past year, TikTok has also been enjoying a surge in user growth and engagement in unexpected places, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In south-east Asia, countries including Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia have grown to become some of TikTok’s biggest markets. In the latter, it completed a deal to take over the country’s largest ecommerce platform this year. It looks increasingly possible that the growth of ByteDance’s domestic version Douyin (which has more than 750mn daily active users), its other businesses such as news platform Jinri Toutiao and video-sharing platform Xigua, and its rapidly growing new markets could be enough to soften the blow from a hit to US revenues from potential bans. Trump and Biden joining the platform, after seeking to ban the app, is its best marketing.

文章来源：FINANCIAL TIMES

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