Comment by zzzeek
right instead Biden ordered US Steel to close and cease all operations, just like Beijing is doing to TikTok. /sarcasm
there is no comparison between these events
right instead Biden ordered US Steel to close and cease all operations, just like Beijing is doing to TikTok. /sarcasm
there is no comparison between these events
> because TikTok is still massively profitable without US
Do we know that? In almost all cases for mobile apps, the US is far and away the largest and most profitable market for any business. I'd also be surprised if the TikTok shop for example is profitable (or available?) outside the US.
I think something like 8/18B revenue (mostly ads) this year is from US. So it's subtantial, but 10B is not chomp change, and theoretically TikTok has growth potential since TikTok algo is competitive with western platforms, which cannot be said for US steel vs other modern metallurgy facilities. Compared to douyin in PRC, TikTok hasn't even began monetizing / ecommerce, which TBH would probably kill its popularity.
>I think something like 8/18B revenue (mostly ads) this year is from US. So it's subtantial, but 10B is not chomp change
A social media site is not like a company that makes widgets. The latter's profits scale linearly with the number of widgets sold. A website's costs do not scale linearly (at least, not in the same way) with the number of users; much of the infrastructure cost is the same whether 500 million or one billion users are on the site.
It's entirely possible that, as nozzlegear said, a TikTok without US users is unprofitable. Especially given that, the last time I checked, US users are a) only 10% of the total TikTok userbase and b) US creators are 21 of the top 50 TikTok users with the most followers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...>
Without US specific data warehousing requirements (~1.5B Project Texas / Oracle), TikTok can fallback to using Douyin infra... which is already scaled for billion+ users. All that might goto PRC datacentres, i.e. Huawei Cloud which exist in most continents. If anything Douyin can eliminate redundant TikTok infra costs. I've no doubt Americans is a disproportionately more profitable in terms of ARPU, it would be a huge hit, but TikTok unlikely to go in red given those factors if RoW markets still leaves ~10B, especially if PRC wants to prioritize using TikTok as portal for ecommerce with PRC exports, which as I mentioned, TikTok is not nearly aggressive with monetizing as Douyin. I can't say it's impossible, but IMO unlikely.
I am talking about Tiktok users, not Douyin. Douyin itself has almost a billion users.
Markets are not countries are not ecosystems. The EU is fragmented by countries but it's a single market, again with more users than the US.
Your stat about revenue is misleading and outdated. Turkey for example generates almost as much revenue as the US, and many markets are currently in the process of being monetized which will take some time, the potential revenue is something Bytedance is going to factor in more than current revenue when it makes a major strategic decision.
TikTok has entire RoW (excluding India) market. Assuming US only bans in US... which TBH we don't know. There's no comparison because TikTok is still massively profitable without US, whereas US Steel is still a mess without JP.