ByteDance, the Chinese company behind the popular video app TikTok, more than doubled its sales last year. In total, the tech company received a total of $34.4 billion in revenue. The American business newspaper Wall Street Journal reports this on the basis of an internal memo from the company.
In addition to TikTok, ByteDance is also active with its Chinese counterpart Douyin. The apps are especially popular among young people, who use them to create funny and catchy music videos of no more than one minute. In addition, ByteDance has a widely used app for news. The company estimates that some 1.9 billion people use one of its apps every month.
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ByteDance did suffer a loss on the considerably higher turnover. Operating profit, which excludes interest payments or one-off costs or benefits, for example, was $2.1 billion negative, according to the Wall Street Journal. A year earlier, ByteDance reported an operating profit of 684 million euros.
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ByteDance and TikTok are not undisputed. For example, there are concerns about the handling of privacy-sensitive data, especially of young users of the apps. Under former US President Donald Trump, the United States even threatened to ban TikTok, but judges held back. The Trump administration claimed that highly personal data of Americans could end up with the Chinese government through ByteDance. Current President Joe Biden scrapped a series of measures targeting TikTok.
