TikTok

TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes. Since their launches, TikTok and Douyin have gained global popularity. In October 2020, TikTok surpassed 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide. Morning Consult named TikTok the third-fastest growing infotech brand of 2020, after Zoom and Peacock. Cloudflare ranked TikTok the most popular website of 2021, surpassing Google. Corporate structure ByteDance, based in Beijing, and its subsidiary TikTok Ltd, based in both Singapore and Los Angeles, were incorporated in the Cayman Islands. ByteDance is owned by its founders and Chinese investors (20%), other global investors (60%), and employees (20%). TikTok Ltd owns four entities that are based respectively in the United States, Australia (which also runs the New Zealand business), United Kingdom (also owns subsidiaries in the European Union), and Singapore (owns operations in Southeast Asia and India). In April 2021, a state-owned enterprise owned by the Cyberspace Administration of China and China Media Group, the China Internet Investment Fund, purchased a 1% stake in ByteDance's main Chinese entity. The Economist, Reuters, and Financial Times have described the Chinese government's stake as a golden share investment.