Is ByteDance a Metaverse Company?

TikTok's tethering itself to GenZ citizens all over the world.

When we talk about the future of the metaverse, we’re actually talking about where the attention economy meets artificial intelligence.

In the attention economy of young people and consumer engagement, it’s a winner-takes all movement. When algorithmic platforms can manipulate sentiment, we really have to ask ourselves why certain companies are doing certain things and who controls them. ByteDance is an AI and app-maker company, but its trajectory for China to go global has changed a lot since the advent of TikTok, it’s most popular global app.

The Metaverse isn’t just VR/AR and immersive new worlds, it’s the digital reality where most of the eyeballs are going. That’s no longer Meta, it’s TikTok. TikTok can scale into entertainment, music, gaming, education and hacking human attention in ways that no other product can duplicate.

The real Media Artisans of the new age, aren’t silly podcast makers or Newsletter wannabes, it’s the kids on TikTok, YouTube, Roblox and Twitch (and their Eastern equivalents). If you want to scale, you have to be on TikTok, YouTube, Bilibili, and so forth. You have to be in the attention economy that actually matters to young people and the future.

ByteDance has very sophisticated product app timelines. The way it’s scaled Douyin and TikTok into E-commerce is very significant (Meta failed to do this at its peak circa 2015). Fast forward 2022, ByteDance is testing paid dramas on Douyin, allowing users to pay for individual episodes that are a few minutes long or for the whole show. TikTok is taking on YouTube.

Individual journalists hoping to make a living with newsletters or podcasts belong to an old world of media. Eyeballs to those channels don’t have a bright future. How long have we been talking about video and the democratization of gaming worlds? Sadly most journalists (as their industry dies due to platforms) have no concept of streaming or relating to younger generations.

So what’s the new reality of attention online? TikTok and Roblox enable young creators to be even more creative and not just passive attention economy post producers. Kids can monetize their creations on Roblox, it’s fostering the Media Artisans of tomorrow. Media coders, media videographers. Not necessarily the Media writers!

The Metaverse is already creating new jobs. Jobs that didn’t exist even two or three years ago.

ByteDance And Bilibili Could Disrupt YouTube or Netflix and not just Meta

Many of the companies who are building the Metaverse are not who you think. TikTok creators will be able to own short dramas in the search for new growth opportunities amid fierce competition for user attention, earning cents per the view in a way writers on legacy platforms were never able to do. When you monetize your creators properly on already dynamic apps, that’s when the real magic happens.

YouTube isn’t awesome, but at least creators have some path to monetization (albeit within narrow rules of clickbait on that channel). TikTok is evolving with the creativity of the GenZ generation.

ByteDance could instantly disrupted LinkedIn, if it wanted. This is because it understand how to build apps and platforms with recommendation engines that make sense. But ByteDance’s version of LinkedIn would be for the Media Artisans, freelancers, attention economy influencers, consultants, and self-employed of how the future of work of GenZ and Alpha cohorts is actually like.

Just like the promises of crypto and decentralization, on the Metaverse, there would be new ways to monetize and create, experience and live online.

The Metaverse isn’t about the future VR worlds distant from our own reality. It’s about digital immersion in a winner-takes-all consumer reality of global interconnectivity. This is why companies that are investing so heavily into gaming are actually Metaverse companies of the future like Tencent, ByteDance or Microsoft.

The American media is limited in its ability to cover how the Metaverse is actually evolving today nearing 2022, because it doesn’t cover Chinese innovation properly. This bifurcation of the perception of the Metaverse, is unfortunate, but it doesn’t change the end-game of how the Metaverse manifests.

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, is testing a new business model involving paid short dramas, a departure from the free, user-produced content that has made the short video platform the premier app of owner ByteDance. The era of digital creators and Media Artisans is just beginning and as usual young people are leading the way.

In the Douyin Test of short dramas feature, each episode runs just a few minutes, and users can choose to purchase individual videos or the entire show, according to a Xinhua News Agency report on Monday. Once purchased, the videos can be watched repeatedly without time limits. Episodes can be as cheap as 1 yuan (15 US cents), technology news site 36kr reported.

A representative from Douyin told the SCMP that the company is still exploring the short drama business, through which it “hopes to encourage more quality content creation”. ByteDance is also slowly understanding what Bilibili has done right to scale to GenZ niche interests.

ByteDance has been focusing on adapting genre fiction published on web novel platforms, mostly targeting young audiences with romance or imperial dramas. These Chinese ecosystem of digital innovation is increasingly understanding (being customer centric) about the GenZ cohort significantly better today than the Western equivalents. Better than Snap and certainly better than YouTube.

TikTok is able to leverage its enormous global popularity to grow ByteDance’s influence in laying down foundations for the Metaverse. What’s obvious about major movements like the transition to electric vehicles, autonomous taxi fleets and the Metaverse products, is they will be to some extent Chinese owned. The Chinese GenZ consumer is basically guiding the future of the metaverse, and a few companies are building platforms young people actually love being immersed in.

ByteDance, the world’s most valuable start-up, has been searching for new sources of revenue amid slowing growth and a Big Tech crackdown from Beijing. The company’s gross revenue is on track to grow 60 per cent this year, after more than doubling in 2020, technology news outlet The Information reported this month.

As a futurist I believe the Metaverse isn’t some fantasy of the future of VR. It’s the new digital reality of the attention economy, the creator economy, the future of how people monetized their online life. It was likely born around 2019 right when TikTok went viral.