2019年7月7日
TikTok, the video-sharing app with 1 billion downloads that's owned by a massive Chinese internet company
One of the most popular apps among teenagers at the moment is a short-form video platform called TikTok. TikTok acts as a social network, where users share videos covering a wide range of categories, from lip syncing to comedic skits to viral challenges. TikTok has over 1 billion all-time downloads, and its popularity and influence has only continued to spread.
TikTok is the product of a major Chinese company, and has only been on the scene for a few years. The app has gone through name changes and gotten new features throughout its history, but it’s all only helped to spur its popularity to new heights.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company that runs several popular social networking apps. ByteDance is run by CEO Zhang Yiming, who founded the company in 2012. Zhang’s name is relatively unknown outside of China, but the 35-year-old CEO comes from a background in software engineering.
Zhang and ByteDance’s first product was a news aggregator app called Toutiao. Zhang wanted to create a news platform whose results were powered by artificial intelligence, separate from China’s search engine Baidu. Since 2012, ByteDance has expanded as an umbrella for several popular Chinese social apps. Just this year, ByteDance has released a WeChat-competing chat app called FlipChat, and a video-messaging app called Duoshan. Bytedance is now worth $US75 billion, making it the most valuable private company in the world. It’s recieved investments from some of the biggest VC firms globally, including SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, and General Atlantic.
In September 2016, ByteDance launched a short-video app in China called Douyin. Short-form video creation was nothing new for China’s market, but Douyin’s popularity skyrocketed. Within a year, Douyin had 100 million users and 1 billion video views each day. Then a year later, Douyin expanded outside of China to select international markets under a new name — TikTok. In November 2017, ByteDance purchased Musical.ly in a deal valued at $US1 billion. All Musical.ly profiles were automatically moved over to the TikTok platform. TikTok has helped to launch some users to celebrity level of fame among Gen Z.
The 6 best tips and tricks to searching Google like a pro
Google search couldn’t be easier to use. But like most Google products, there’s a surprising amount of depth to the search bar than you might think. Inserting certain symbols into your Google search, for example, can limit millions of potential results so you only see the ones that are actually relevant to you.
1. Putting quotation marks around your search helps you find exactly that word or phrase.
2. Adding a dash, or hyphen, before a word will exclude that term from your results. So if you search “raptors -toronto -nba -basketball,” you should find search results about raptors that don’t have to do with the Toronto Raptors.
3. If you add a tilde — that squiggly symbol “~” next to your 1 key — before any word in a search term, that word’s synonyms will also appear in the results.
4. If you search “site:anywebsite.com” before any of your search terms, you will get results that are only on that particular website. So if you search “site:businessinsider.com apple,” you will only find Apple- (or apple-) related stories from Business Insider.
5. If you put a vertical bar — like this “|” — between your search terms, Google will give you websites that have any or all of the terms. So if you search for “jacket | blazer | cardigan” your results will have any or all of those terms.
6. If you put two periods between two numbers, Google will give you results within those number ranges. So if you search “top songs 1980.. 1990,” Google will show you the best songs between 1980 and 1990.
The last major opponent of China's Muslim oppression has retreated into silence
In recent months, a wave of Islamic countries stood up to China over its oppression of the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority before backing down again, largely due to fear of Beijing’s economic vengeance. Turkey – which bills itself as a leader of the Islamic world – is the latest country to retreat into silence.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken out against China’s oppression of the Uighurs on numerous past occasions, but this week he gave his implicit support to China’s policies in Xinjiang during a state visit to the country. He added that some people were seeking to “abuse” the Xinjiang crisis to jeopardize Turkey and China’s economic relationship. “This abuse is having a negative impact on Turkish-Chinese relations. It is necessary that we do not give opportunity to such abuse.”
China has installed a modern surveillance state in Xinjiang. Uighurs in the region are forced to download malware that sweeps their phones for content unsavoury to the Chinese regime, and authorities have detained up to 1.5 million of them in prison-like camps where people are reportedly tortured.
Though major Muslim countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia have also been silent about China’s Uighur crisis. Until now, Turkey had been the only Islamic country that dared speak up for the Uighurs. Turkey is currently home to some 35,000 Uighurs, that number includes many former detainees in China’s prison-like camps.
Erdogan himself has previously been a prominent voice for the Uighurs. Beijing also temporarily closed a consulate in Izmir, western Turkey, with Chinese ambassador to Turkey Deng Li telling Reuters: “Criticising your friend publicly … will be reflected in commercial and economic relations.” Turkey – which underwent a currency collapse and a recession last year – has grown increasingly reliant on Chinese economic aid in recent years. Erdogan heaped praise on the Belt and Road during his China visit, with both Turkish and Chinese media reporting his eagerness to work alongside China on new projects in the region.
Many Uighurs in Turkey either had their Chinese passports revoked on their way out. They cannot file for work permits or legal residency in Turkey. This effectively renders them stateless, which precludes them from finding work, both outlets reported. The contrast between Soylu’s support and Erdogan’s apparent kowtowing to Beijing is “a delicate balancing act on the part of Turkey.”
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