TikTok's Secret To Explosive Growth? 'Billions And Billions Of Dollars' Says Snap CEO Evan Spiegel

American social media companies are increasingly feeling the squeeze from TikTok, the fastest growing video platform on the planet, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance. At this year's Code Conference, some of the world's top tech and media CEOs, and prominent political voices, raised concerns at the event about the power, rapid growth and surveillance capabilities of the Chinese-owned platform, in some cases calling for it to be banned altogether. From a report: "The reason why this has been so challenging for companies to respond to in the United States, but also around the world, is the scale of TikTok's investment," said Spiegel of Snap, which recently laid off some 20% of its own workforce.

"What nobody had anticipated in the United States was the level of investment that ByteDance made into the U.S. market, and of course in Europe, because it was just something that was unimaginable -- no startup could afford to invest billions and billions and billions of dollars in user acquisition like that around the world," Spiegel said Wednesday night. "It was a totally different strategy than any technology company had expected before because it wasn't an innovation-led strategy; it was really about subsidizing large-scale user acquisition."

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