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Unlike most of its peripatetic predecessors, though, ByteDance has built its empire by making products that appeal beyond China. It is China’s first global software giant. It has also courted foreign investors.
不過，與多數四處游走的先行者不同，字節跳動是通過生產在中國以外具有吸引力的產品來建立自己的帝國的。它是中國第一個全球軟件巨頭。它還吸引了外國投資者。
Filings in Hong Kong show that it has used an arrangement called the “Sina structure”, which allows it to accept money from abroad, since its founding (many Chinese tech firms turn to this structure only when eyeing a stockmarket listing in America). Around 80% of ByteDance’s investors are non-Chinese. So are four of its five board members. The other is Mr Zhang.
香港的文件顯示，自成立以來，它采用了一種叫做“新浪結構”的安排，允許它接受來自國外的資金(許多中國科技公司只有在考慮在美國上市時才會采用這種結構)。字節跳動公司大約80%的投資者都不是中國人。該公司的5名董事會成員中有4名都是外國人。另一位是張先生。
All this helps ensure ByteDance is not, in contrast to many Chinese tech upstarts, in hock to Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent— which is handy, for Bytedance competes with China’s tech titans for ad revenue. It makes most of its money selling ads in its two main Chinese apps: Douyin, a Chinese TikTok, and Toutiao, a multimedia-and-news app akin to Facebook’s newsfeed (its WeChat rival, Duoshan, disappointed).
所有這些都有助于確保字節跳動不像許多中國科技新創企業那樣，欠下阿里巴巴、百度和騰訊的債務——這很方便，因為字節跳動與中國的科技巨頭在廣告收入上互相競爭。它的主要收入來源是在兩個主要的中國應用程序中銷售廣告：抖音——中國版的TikTok，和頭條——一個類似于Facebook的新聞推送的多媒體和新聞應用程序(它的微信競爭對手多山遭遇了挫敗)。
How much money it makes, exactly, is unclear: as a private company Bytedance does not publish its accounts. But leaks and statements from investors put last year’s revenue at between 104bn yuan and 140bn yuan ($15bn-20bn), more than Uber, Snapchat and Twitter combined.
確切地說，它能賺多少錢還不清楚：作為一家私營公司，字節跳動不會公布公司賬目。但據泄露的消息和投資者的聲明，該公司去年的營收在1040億元至1400億元(合150億至200億美元)之間，超過了優步、Snapchat和Twitter的總和。
Its ad revenues in China surpassed Tencent’s and Baidu’s and now trail only those of Alibaba. It reportedly turned a profit in June 2019, a feat in the world of loss-making unicorns. If the firm generates $25bn in sales this year, as it is expected to despite covid-19, it will have done so three years faster than Facebook.
它在中國的廣告收入超過了騰訊和百度，現在僅次于阿里巴巴。據報道，該公司在2019年6月實現盈利，這在虧損的獨角獸行業是一大偉績。如果該公司今年的銷售額達到250億美元(盡管有covid19的影響)，那么它將比Facebook早3年實現這一銷售額。
It is the only big Chinese firm whose share of the domestic advertising market is growing fast, from 9% to 17% in 2019, according to Bernstein, a research firm. A recently launched advertising network, Pangle, which lets advertisers reach consumers across any of its non-Chinese apps, may at last help it monetise TikTok.
據研究公司伯恩斯坦稱，字節跳動是中國唯一一家在國內廣告市場份額快速增長的大公司，從9%增長到2019年的17%。最近成立的廣告網絡Pangle可以讓廣告商通過其任何非中文應用接觸到消費者，這可能最終會幫助它將TikTok貨幣化。
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