70% growth in annual revenues is great, right? Well, a report that ByteDance’s sales grew that much in 2021, to $58bn, comes with a caveat: it’s a deceleration from the more-than 100% growth the company saw the year before. Reuters has the report, based on an internal presentation of the 2021 figures at the Chinese technology company. Growth is still growth, but the slowdown is something to keep an eye on, as rumblings continue in China about its government’s plans for further regulation of big tech companies.
Elsewhere, the New York Post has some juice on the recent departure of TikTok’s global head of marketing Nick Tran. Its report suggested that Tran was “ousted after blindsiding top management with a series of increasingly bizarre campaigns” – including the troubled launch of its first NFTs last year. More positively for TikTok, it has begun testing creator-level subscriptions: another layer for its in-app economy alongside tipping. The news comes the same week Instagram began its own test of creator subscriptions.
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Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…