ByteDance

ByteDance is a Chinese technology company founded in 2012 in Beijing by Zhang Yiming. Its first hit was Toutiao, a news app that, instead of having editors choose the stories, learned from each reader what to show them. That idea, a feed run entirely by a recommendation algorithm, became the core of everything it built later.

Its best-known products are short-video apps: Douyin in China, launched in 2016, and TikTok for the rest of the world, which in 2018 absorbed the lip-sync app Musical.ly. You do not need to follow anyone: the "For You" feed watches what you finish, rewatch, skip and like, and within minutes it adjusts what comes next. ByteDance also makes CapCut, a video editor, and Lark, a workplace chat and documents tool.

It makes money mostly from advertising placed between videos, and also from in-app shopping, where creators and stores sell products, and from virtual gifts viewers buy for creators during live streams. Because its apps are used by many people outside China while the company is Chinese, governments in several countries have raised questions about where user data is stored and who can access it, and ByteDance has set up separate data arrangements in some regions in response.