Heena Sharma Blog

  China's ByteDance has decided to reduce the size of its India team and is unsure when the company will make a comeback in India, it said in an internal memo to employees on Wednesday. India has decided to retain its ban on video app TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps after reviewing responses from the companies on issues such as compliance and privacy, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.   The apps were banned amid rising tensions between India and China following a border clash between the two nations last year. "We initially hoped that this situation would be short-lived ... we find that has not been the case," ByteDance wrote in an internal memo to staff, seen by Reuters. Read More

  A month after federal regulators ordered it to disclose how its practices affect children and teenagers, TikTok is tightening its privacy practices for the under-18 crowd. Starting on Wednesday, default privacy setting for accounts with users aged 13 to 15 will be private. That means only someone the user approves as a follower can view their videos, which was not the case previously. But teens can still change this setting to public if they want. Older teenagers won't see this default setting change. For users aged 16 or 17, the default setting to let people download the videos they created will now be off," rather than on." TikTok is also blocking users' ability to download videos created by those 15 or younger. This age group will also see direct messaging restricted and won't be able to host live streams. TikTok is wildly popular with teenagers and younger kids. A feature called TikTok for Younger Users offers pre-selected, age appropriate" video...

  China's ByteDance is in talks to buy into mobile games publisher CMGE Technology Group Ltd, four people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters, as the owner of short video app TikTok moves to strengthen its next pillar of growth. The deal would come as the gaming industry continues to benefit from COVID-19 pandemic countermeasures which have forced people to stay at home, boosting game downloads. ByteDance plans to buy part or all of the 27.6% CMGE stake held by Fairview Ridge Investment Ltd, controlled by CMGE chairman Xiao Jian and vice chairman Sin Hendrick, said two of the people. ByteDance is looking to offer HK$4 to HK$5 ($0.52 to $0.64) per share to purchase the stake, said another person. The range represents a premium of 30% to 62% above the stock's Monday close of HK$3.08. Read More  

  Chinese short-video making app TikTok has expanded a privacy feature where parents will have more options over what their children can see and restrict comments on their content. Parents will now be able to restrict who can comment on their kids' videos, who can view their account and who can see what videos they've liked. Parents will also be able to stop their kids from searching for videos, users, hashtags or sounds. TikTok already offers the ability for parents to turn off or limit direct messages, reports The Verge. The new options are all part of TikTok's Family Pairing feature. The update is a big step from TikTok. In February 2019, the company paid $5.7 million to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over alleged violations of a children's privacy law. Read More  

ByteDance valuation has risen at least a third to more than $100 billion in recent private share transactions, people familiar with the matter said, reflecting expectations the owner of video phenomenon TikTok will keep pulling in advertisers. Stock in the world’s most valuable start-up has changed hands recently at a price that suggests its value has risen more than 33 per cent from about $75 billion during a major round of funding two years ago, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter isn’t public. Some trades recently valued the Chinese company between $105 billion and $110 billion on the secondary markets, some of people said. It has also traded as high as $140 billion, one person said. Read More

TikTok has surpassed two billion downloads worldwide on the App Store and Google Play. The latest milestone comes just five months after TikTok surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. In Q1 2020, it generated the most downloads for any app ever in a quarter, accumulating more than 315 million installs across the App Store and Google Play. TikTok's latest surge comes amid the global Covid-19 pandemic, which has seen consumers drawn to their mobile devices more than ever as they look for new ways to shop, work, and connect with others. In India, the short video making app leads the chart with more than 600 million downloads or about 30.3 per cent of all unique installs. China is the second leading country for installs, accumulating 196.6 million to date, or 9.7 per cent of all downloads, for its version of the app, known as Douyin, reported mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Read More

Short video-sharing platform TikTok on Thursday introduced 'Family Pairing' feature, which allows parents to have control over their children activities on the app, by linking their own account with their kids, with a caveat that children have to approve this. The move will give parents more control over the user activity of their kids as they can set controls on 'Screen Time Management', 'Direct Messages' and 'Restricted Mode'. "Family Pairing enhances our suite of safety tools and complements our work to provide greater access to product features as users reach key milestones for digital literacy," the company said in a statement on Friday. Read More

Two Republican senators on Thursday introduced a bill aimed at banning federal employees from using Chinese social media app TikTok on their government-issued phones, amid growing national security concerns around the collection and sharing of data on US users with China's government. The bill by Senators Josh Hawley and Rick Scott comes as several US agencies that deal with national security and intelligence issues including the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have banned employees from using the app. It is also the latest attempt to rein in technology companies by Hawley, who has repeatedly clashed with big tech companies. "TikTok is owned by a Chinese company that includes Chinese Communist Party members on its board, and it is required by law to share user data with Beijing," Hawley said. " As many of our federal agencies have already recognized, TikTok is a major security risk to the United States, and it has no place on gove...

TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co Ltd is in talks with big music labels - Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music - for global licensing deals to include their songs on its new music subscription service, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. ByteDance is looking to launch its music streaming as soon as next month, initially in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Brazil, before a future opening in the United States, the FT reported https://on.ft.com/37brU3U, citing people familiar with the matter. In addition to on-demand music, ByteDance's app will include a library of short video clips for listeners to search through and synch to songs as they listen, the report added. ByteDance has not given a name to its music app yet and pricing remains unclear, although it is expected to cost less than the $10 a month charged by Spotify Technology SA, Apple Inc and others in the United States, according to the report. Read More

China-based ByteDance, the parent company of popular short video application TikTok , will set up a data centre in India, becoming one of the first social media companies to do so in the country, the company said in a statement shared exclusively with Business Standard. "India is one of our strongest markets and we are happy to be part of the mainframe of Digital India in 15 languages. Since the launch of our platforms in India, we have stored the data of our Indian users at industry-leading third party data centres in the US and Singapore...We now believe the time has come to take the next big leap," the statement read. The company has set an internal target of 6-18 months to set up the data centre, Business Standard has learnt. The plan is part of the $1 billion ByteDance has recently committed to the Indian market over the next three years. The move is also significant because of the Indian government's ongoing focus on data localisation, as well as the incr...

It is open season on short-video platform TikTok and social media portal Helo, both owned by Chinese tech major Bytedance, with at least five state governments, as well as the Centre, gunning for a ban on them. According to sources, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat are planning to ban the apps. The governments of Punjab and Karnataka are likely to follow suit. Senior officials in the information technology (IT) ministry said that officials from Maharashtra, Gujarat, as well as Telangana, had “informally” got in touch with them to understand various ways to either curtail the usage of TikTok or ban it. According to sources, these states are alarmed by the rising use of the app in smaller towns and hinterland, where it is increasingly being used for spreading hate messages and child pornography. While the company has said that it is monitoring the app to prevent such incidents and cooperating with the authorities, the state governments believe banning...