Nationality
Chinese
CEO
Liang Rubo
Sector / Main Business Area
TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by parent company ByteDance
Listed / Private
Private
Competitors
Include Instagram Reels, Google’s YouTube
Fun fact(s)/Brand(s)
Douyin is the Chinese and more feature-laden version of TikTok. Following increasing pressure from the the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the company dissolved its investment arm in January 2022 after conducting an internal review of the business. This is particularly notable because this is the division that helped to grow the company into what it is today after its $1bn 2017 purchase of Shanghai based start-up Musical.ly which formed the backbone of what eventually became TikTok! TikTok was banned in India in summer 2020 along with 223 other Chinese apps in response to anti-Chinese feeling in the country that came about due to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers in a clash with Chinese on the Himalayan border. For quite some time Zhang Yiming was the face of TikTok, but the administration just didn’t seem to like his unconventional ways and he stepped down as CEO towards the end of 2021.
Last reviewed/edited
23rd February 2022 PW