How this Chinese unicorn’s Musical.ly clone attempted to target Indonesia’s teens

Photo credit: Bytedance, modified by Tech in Asia

On July 3, 2018, the Indonesian ministry banned Tik Tok, saying that the app contains negative videos that are a bad influence on the youth. However, the ministry added that the ban may be lifted if Tik Tok cleans up its platform. The article below is from September 2017, when Tik Tok was launched in the Indonesian market.

Becoming a star has never been easier for teens in the digital age. Create viral music videos, get discovered, sign an album deal. That’s the dream, anyway.

A Chinese media unicorn wants to tap into that teen stardom phenomenon – especially in Asia. Best known for its popular news app in China, Toutiao, ByteDance today announced its expansion into Indonesia with Tik Tok, which looks very similar to the wildly popular Musical.ly.

Like Musical.ly, Tik Tok lets users whip up short videos set to popular songs, like M.I.A’s Paper Planes, or their own recordings. As a Tik Tok user, you can apply a host of Snapchat-like filters to your videos, speed or slow down footage, and cut the music you need.

Image credit: Ngọc Yuki, modified by Tech in Asia.

Tik Tok users are between 15 and 22 years old, according to a spokesperson. They declined to comment on the number of users it has reached since it launched September 2016.

It looks a good fit for Indonesia, where those under 25 make up 42 percent of its 258 million population. Fast-growing mobile phone adoption and an expanding 4G network are also why Tik Tok chose Indonesia as its next target market, says a company spokesperson.

ByteDance is set on world domination.

Tik Tok is just the latest product from ByteDance, which is valued at around US$11 billion. The Chinese startup invests in and operates a variety of media businesses around the world, including China, the US, India, and now Southeast Asia. According to an interview with MIT Technology Review, the Chinese media unicorn is set on world domination, with ambitions to surpass international publishing and media organizations like Facebook and Buzzfeed.

See: China’s hottest media startup worth $11 billion with new funding

In February, the giant Chinese startup acquired video app Flipagram. Last October, it invested US$25 million into Indian news app Dailyhunt. Tying these businesses together is its increasing investment in artificial intelligence research, which funnels into content recommendation systems, automatic article summarization, and more.

Tik Tok is using “personalization recommendation algorithms” to understand user preferences and increase engagement.

Star struck