US Media Article: TikTok's Incredible Rise

On November 5, the Wall Street Journal website published an article entitled "The Incredible Rise of TikTok".
The excerpt of the full text is as follows: In just five years, TikTok has erupted into a pop culture phenomenon and a geopolitical flash point.
It is the most popular application in the world, used by 2/3 of American teenagers.
Its super attractive short video format has led Silicon Valley to follow suit and make overnight fame easier than ever before.
What is also unusual is that its future is still uncertain, because officials from both parties in the United States regard this imported product as a threat to national security, while defenders advocating the protection of children's networks warn about its negative impact on millions of young users.
One thing is certain: there has never been anything like TikTok in the world.
The following is a description of TikTok's rise through interviews with insiders of the company and other people following its rapid, violent and exciting rise.
Five years ago this month, TikTok's parent company in Beijing, ByteDance, acquired an application called Musical.ly.
This app allows users to publish short video clips, and has developed a group of followers among young girls, who mainly use this app to publish lip synching videos.
James Veraldi (an early employee of Musical.ly) said: "I think all of us have seen this potential.
You can understand this, and it seems that it may become the next blockbuster." A few months before the acquisition of Musical.ly, ByteDance launched the international version of Tiktok, which is a very popular application in China.
In 2018, ByteDance merged TikTok application with Musical.ly and re released it in the United States under the name of TikTok.
This merger has provided billions of dollars of investment for this re launched application, as well as the support of a strong team of engineers in China.
Veraldi said, "It took us five years to get there, but it took six months for ByteDance to get there." Emma Griben (a current employee of TikTok) said, "Nobody really heard of it at that time.
I always use the words' this app 'as an explanation for TikTok.
I will say, yes, I work on' this app called TikTok '." "It is very attractive to me" The way TikTok operates is fundamentally different from other social media.
TikTok does not show users the video content published by friends or other users they choose to follow, but shows users the videos of people they may not follow but may like.
The algorithm learns the type of content that everyone wants to see according to the time each person watches or stays on certain videos.
The more time users spend on this application, the better TikTok's algorithm will do in pushing content for them.
Salini Cantaya (director of the documentary "TikTok Rush" of the American Public Broadcasting Corporation) said: "I think one of the essence of TikTok is also people