China's king of internet fluff 'ByteDance' wants to conquer the world

Bytedance, which owns Tik Tok and Musical.ly, recently secured $3 bn in new funding from SoftBank and others and has found a rare measure of success by doing things a little differently

A Chinese internet company that serves up homemade break-dancing videos, dishy news bites and goofy hashtag challenges has become one of the planet’s most richly valued start-ups, with a roughly $75 billion price tag. And it has big plans for storming phone screens across the rest of the globe, too.

You may not have heard of the company, Bytedance. You may never have used any of its breezy, colourful apps. But your nearest teenager is probably already obsessed with Musical.ly, the video-sharing platform that Bytedance bought for around $1 billion last year and folded into its own video service, TikTok.