Who is managing TikTok: globalization without a central network organization and bytes

The success or failure of TikTok will verify whether a global cooperation company can adapt to the era when globalization is no longer so friendly.
Article | Gao Honghao, editor of Li Xiaolei | Huang Junjie, Gao Honghao has no product.
Like TikTok, it has been used by more than 1.2 billion people every month for five years since it was launched globally.
It is also a new product supported by a large platform.
Instagram has been acquired by Facebook (Meta) for 6 years, and its monthly life has only reached 1 billion yuan.
There is no second such successful product that has been completed under such frequent management changes - TikTok has been online for five years, and five new directors have changed.
Similar to TikTok, TikTok's success so far depends on the strength of the byte beating system: from TikTok's management team, mature business methodology, strong group middle office support, and founder Zhang Yiming's long-term firm investment in internationalization.
However, after a series of crises caused by geopolitical conflicts in 2020, TikTok is gradually distancing itself from this system.
This is also the main reason why TikTok managers change frequently.
In the early days, TikTok was in the charge of young Chinese executives who had grown up from Tiao Yin.
Now, it has been handed over to executives with foreign nationality, rich overseas background and political and business relations.
At the same time, TikTok began to weaken its "regional" identity: a large number of foreign employees entered the management, regional managers in different countries/regions were replaced by local people, and most job candidates were not restricted to their work locations.
Even TikTok's internal employees can't tell where the company's headquarters are.
There are hundreds of thousands of people supporting the operation of this super application in Shanghai and Beijing office buildings, the Los Angeles office building in the United States, and TikTok CEO Zhou's Singapore, where the company is funded.
A large number of decisions are made dispersedly.
Data is also cut.
A former employee of TikTok said that as early as 2019, Chinese local teams could not access many data information of TikTok, including the user's telephone number.
To address the concerns of governments around the world about data security, TikTok stores user data in the United States and backs it up in the data center in Singapore.
After Trump's defeat in 2020, the lethal threat faced by TikTok has eased a lot.
The counterattack of Google and Facebook also failed to shake TikTok's leading position in the global short video market.
But TikTok is still burning money.
At present, more than half of its income comes from the United States, and only 2% comes from the rich Japanese market.
In a wider area, TikTok is just starting, whether it is advertising or e-commerce.
As the most successful globalization sample of China's Internet industry, TikTok will need to prove whether it can become an independent, sustainable and successful product as it gradually breaks away from the system on which it relies for success