Sixty seconds of fame

摘要

IN MAY BYTEDANCE, the world's most valuable startup, leapt further ahead of other technology "unicorns". It was valued at $140bn on the secondary market, up by nearly half from a funding round in the spring. The reason? TikTok, a short-video app that has been downloaded 2bn times. The "last sunny corner" of the internet, as it is known thanks to jolly user-generated content, is China's first worldwide internet sensation. For ByteDance's 37-year-old founder, Zhang Yiming, it is part of an ambition to build a global software giant. Now that ambition is in jeopardy. On June 29th India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps, after deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Himalayas. The same month ByteDance's American lawyers told it that President Donald Trump's administration has concerns over TikTok's Chinese ownership. America is now threatening to ban the app altogether.