TikTok ranks top in the short-form video category, with its overseas mobile app seeing over 1 billion monthly active users for the first time. TikTok also tops the Chinese non-games income ranking, download ranking and active users ranking for its global app. CapCut, the global version of JianYing (剪映), a video editing app from ByteDance, had 33 million downloads in May. TikTok and CapCut are creating a closed-loop ecosystem for creatives in the video field.

TikTok recently announced that it would increase its investment in the UK with a new office in London to expand its operations and teams in the country. This would boost its UK infrastructure investment to about 140 million GBP (195.65 million USD). The UK has over 30 million monthly users of TikTok, making it the largest user community in Europe. TikTok is also adjusting its US e-commerce business, replacing management from China with local recruits in Seattle.

With the “sale or ban” order in limbo, it is predicted that TikTok will invest outside the US. Its recent success in user and income, however, adds to its leverage as an indispensable platform for users, creators and brands alike. Strengthening its e-commerce arm across the board will likely be its next step into monetisation.

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“AI Alive” will be the first such tool from the platform, and will enable users to convert still images from their TikTok Stories into videos. This new feature uses AI to give movement and background sound effects to images. For example, when the photo shows the sky, clouds or the sea, the elements would move to sounds like the wind or waves after the AI generation.

As AI-generated videos are becoming increasingly popular on the platform, including image-to-video content, it is natural that TikTok would want to have that capability within its app. Competitors like Instagram and Snapchat currently provide text-to-image tools on their platforms, but TikTok AI Alive is the first in-app image-to-video generation tool. It is also reported that Snapchat is looking into similar features in future.

TikTok still faces a “sale or ban” order in the US, with a deadline of 19 June for the platform to either be sold to an American owner or be banned in the country. However, after extending the deadline for 75 days in early April amid the tariff announcements, US President Donald Trump also signalled that he was willing to extend the deadline again should the sale not be completed by then.

TikTok, on the other hand, seeks to expand beyond the United States with its e-commerce wing, the TikTok Shop, which launched branches in Germany, France and Italy in March and Brazil in April. It is also launching a “Brand Consideration” stage advertising across the board. Combined with the latest AI feature implementation, TikTok is making itself more indispensable to users around the world. This, after all, is the biggest leverage it has against any ban.

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But the stream also included a collaboration with the “Chinese Rickroll” of a song, Tian Yiming‘s (田一名) cover version of “Super Idol”. The song was originally an ad jingle for Watsons’s bottled water, written by singer-songwriter A Si, but Tian’s version won out against many cover versions on Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister app. It, in turn, inspired many lip-sync versions on TikTok, making it a huge hit on social media, thus triggering the Speed collab.

Jin Sheng Yuan (今生缘, sometimes “Affinities of This Life”) gained popularity last year when the English-speaking audiences on TikTok began to “decipher” the lyrics by mishearing it as an English song. From turning “我们今生” (wo men jin sheng, lit. We in this life) into “women cheat” (or “all men cheat” if the cover singer is female) and “沧桑” (cang sang, lit. vicissitudes of life) into “Samsung”. The song was then called the “Samsung” song. When the TikTok ban was imminent, many American users used this song as a farewell to the platform, and many more brought it to Rednote when they sought refuge at the Chinese platform before the ban that never was.

Other recent hits from China that became popular on TikTok include rapper Skai Isyourgod (揽佬)’s “Bafanglaicai” (八方来财, Money comes from all directions), “Yinguo” (因果, Karma) and “Blueprint” (大展宏图). The tracks became popular in China for their “abstract” post-irony towards Cantonese culture and superstitions, while becoming a gateway to traditional Chinese cultures for foreign audiences. Plus, the strong Cantonese accent in Skai’s Mandarin seemed to confuse many.

With Chinese platforms such as TikTok and Rednote continuing to receive interest in the West and cultural dialogues like the “TikTok refugee” event continuing to take place, there is bound to be more music and memes (and musical memes) that will be seen and heard in the West. In many cases, it will be in completely different contexts, like almost every song mentioned above.

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Zhang Yiming is also listed as the richest person in China on Forbes and Bloomberg. Zhang is worth 65.5 billion USD, according to Forbes’s estimation, and is the 23rd richest person in the world. Meanwhile, Ma Huateng, the co-founder and CEO of Tencent and Zhong Shanshan follow as number 27 and 28 on the Forbes list. Bloomberg ranks Zhang at number 24 in the world with a 57.5 billion USD net worth, while Ma and Zhong rank 25 and 26, respectively.

On Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, the topic “Zhang Yiming is the richest person in China with 65.5 billion USD net worth” (#张一鸣655亿美元身家登顶中国首富#) reached number 11 on the Hot Search list with 44.11 million views. Netizens find it interesting that social platform entrepreneurs are now taking over e-commerce for the top spots, just as e-commerce took over from property tycoons before.

The Hurun list also includes interesting changes as Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has become the fastest-growing Chinese entrepreneur, and Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek makes it to the list with 3.3 billion RMB (454.71 million USD) in net worth. It seems that with the success of social platforms and AI, another wave of Chinese entrepreneurs is ready to take the world stage.

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What pushed Douyin’s e-commerce division up last year is mostly smaller merchants and brand merchants, i.e. official brand accounts instead of retailers, as well as the development of the “shelf e-commerce” (货架电商, essentially conventional searchable online shops rather than “content e-commerce” like livestreams and clips.

According to official Douyin data, merchant-led livestreams made up 70% of all e-commerce livestreamers. “Shelf”, merchant-led livestream and influencer-led livestreams make up 40%, 30% and 30%, respectively, in terms of GMV. The number of brands starting merchant-led livestreaming sales on Douyin grew 113% year-on-year (YoY) in 2024. Douyin is planning to provide merchant-led streams with more resources in 2025, which is what competitors such as Taobao and Tmall Group and Pinduoduo have been doing since late last year as well.

Douyin is reportedly setting its GMV target of 2025 at 4.2 trillion RMB (570.22 billion USD). With top influencer streamers susceptible to controversies, merchant-led streaming and smaller streamers have become preferred replacements. On 6 March, the platform also announced its 9 measures to support small and medium merchants, such as algorithm changes and fee reductions. With Bilibili already seeing benefits brought by smaller streamers, it is interesting to see how Douyin’s strategy plays out.

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The Brazil site is reportedly managed by the same team that is currently running TikTok Shop in Mexico. It is inviting domestic merchants in the country to join the platform before opening to applications. The requirements for Brazilian sellers are similar to the Mexico site. The “fully managed” mode of service is currently unavailable in Brazil due to tariffs. The Japanese site of TikTok Shop will include local companies and individuals as the first wave of merchants and is now collecting merchant intents. Industry sources believe that beauty, skincare and pet goods will be popular sellers in Japan.

TikTok Shop is also expanding to Germany, France, and Italy. At the moment, it is admitting locally registered businesses as merchants but will soon include independent sellers. The platform first landed in Spain and Ireland for testing and is also launching its “Fulfilled by TikTok” logistics service in Germany and hiring logistics workers in Spain.

Brazil is one of, if not the hottest market in Latin America in terms of e-commerce. Currently, both Amazon and Temu are battling in the region against Argentine competitor Mercado Libre and Singaporean Shopee. Amazon is lowering its commission and fees for several categories of goods to compete. TikTok is entering the market with fierce competition. But with its future in the United States in limbo, other markets, especially Southeast Asia will become much more important for TikTok.

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According to the report, TikTok is the most popular app in the UAE, with the country’s 11.2 million residents spending 7.63 billion hours on the app in 2024. On average, each person uses the app for 2 hours every day. Meanwhile, the report also revealed the most downloaded social media apps. TikTok, again, topped the list, followed by global players Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Telegram. In fact, TikTok is the second most downloaded app overall, behind VPN Proxy Master. The report also concluded that the Chinese e-commerce platform Temu was the most downloaded shopping app in the country, partly because of its affordable pricing.

TikTok is actively developing its e-commerce functions as TikTok Shop is quickly expanding into Europe and other countries. Its Chinese sister app Douyin was recently reported to have surpassed the e-commerce titan JD.com in terms of GMV, ranking third in China, after Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group and Temu owner PDD Holding’s Pinduoduo. In a recent survey by YouGov, 61% of consumers from Saudi Arabia and UAE plan to shop on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok this Ramadan.

In another report, it was also reported that TikTok was the fastest-growing social platform in the UAE, with 2.5 million new users in the last year, up 30.4% from 2023. As social commerce and livestream sales are being popularised outside China, TikTok is also facing competition from compatriot apps such as Temu.

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Before Germany, TikTok first launched its FBT services in the UK in August 2023, benchmarking against Amazon’s Fulfilled by Amazon services. In the United States, TikTok Shop works with fulfilment providers such as ShipBob to provide logistics services to their North American merchants. During the Black Friday sales period last year, TikTok updated its logistics policies in the US, such as prolonging fulfilment time and allowing longer renewal and returns periods.

However, with the “sale or ban” order in the US still unresolved, it is understandable that TikTok is expediting its European expansion. In December 2024, TikTok Shop launched its Spain site with 500 merchants, before also launching in Ireland. Social commerce revenue in Europe is projected to reach 48.3 billion USD by 2028, with Spain being the fastest-growing country.

With Temu launching “one-click” services for merchants to sell in EU 27 without national sites and Shein pledging 250 million EUR (260.46 million USD) investment in UK and EU while expanding its fulfilment services to Germany, the UK, France, Italy and Spain, Chinese e-commerce platforms are competing fiercely in Europe. Temu and Shein are also set to go head-to-head in the UK courts next year. JD.com is running first-party logistics in Europe with its Ochama brand. With scrutiny on data security on these Chinese platforms from both the US and Europe, TikTok might be facing more difficulties than competition or forming the habit for consumers to buy via social media platforms.

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Formerly known as Xiaohongshu, RED and REDnote, the platform recently unified its name in the West as Rednote, stylised as “rednote” on both the Apple App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. Rednote launched its AI project in 2023 and has been optimising its AI search function since last year.

However, the lifestyle platform’s latest AI venture is arguably its best-known, the AI translation tool that it urgently launched this year during the “TikTok refugee” wave of American user registrations. The auto-translate function was introduced days after the refugees joined the platform and people have been impressed with its functions and speed. From fictional languages to Morse code and classical Chinese, machine translations can do much more than English-to-Chinese translations. People quickly figured out that its capabilities go beyond a translator and more likely an LLM. It is not yet confirmed, however, which model it is and whether it is proprietary from Rednote.

Since last year, tech companies and platforms in China are doubling down on AI models. Search engine giant Baidu released its own AI search function in response to competitors like Rednote as it threatens Baidu’s position as the top search engine in China. Even food delivery platform Meituan launched its AI assistant for ordering. With competitors in China and abroad, from dedicated tech startups to fellow platforms, ByteDance and Rednote are taking radically different approaches.

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The report began when the Beijing Municipal Health Commission released a document on its website which shows that it had approved an application from Douyin Group to set up a hospital in Chaoyang district, called Beijing Arion Hospital (北京爱瑞医院) with a “tbc” at the end of the name. The document shows that it will be a for-profit comprehensive tertiary hospital with over 800 beds. It will also be a joint venture with foreign investors, according to the published registration.

It is not the first time ByteDance has invested in healthcare or in hospitals. The company’s venture in healthcare began in 2020 after acquiring a popular medical website Baikemy.com before launching its own healthcare service app Xiaohe. Through Xiaohe, ByteDance acquired the Amcare Women’s and Children’s Hospital, a high-end private healthcare provider. It acquired several other establishments before launching livestream e-commerce sales on Douyin. In fact, there has also been unconfirmed reports from “sources close to the matter” that the application was not for a new hospital but an expansion of existing Amcare facilities.

The online healthcare market in China is projected to reach 494.3 billion RMB (67.82 billion USD) in 2025. Facing competition from the likes of Baidu, JD.com and Alibaba, Douyin has yet to convert enough traffic to sales or Xiaohe users. Pundits believe that should Douyin expand its offline healthcare presence by building a new hospital or other means, how to profit might be the key question for the social media giant.

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