Topic
10 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2014
Alex Zhu got the idea for Musical.ly after watching teenagers on a Caltrain ride collaboratively shoot and edit videos on their phones.
“And he sees a group of teenagers on the train and they're playing with their phones and they're, they're doing it together.”
2014
Musical.ly used app store keyword stuffing in its app title to drive early downloads in the US.
“Keyword stuffing. Stuff a ton of keywords into their title.”
2015
Musical.ly saw a weekly download spike on Thursday nights in the US, which the team traced to the TV show Lip Sync Battle.
“they realized that on Thursday nights in the U S every Thursday night, there's a big spike in downloads.”
2015
Musical.ly reached number one in the US iOS App Store on July 6, 2015, after its lip-sync redesign.
“So two months later on July 6th, it's number one in the U S iOS app store since then musically.”
2016
By 2016 Musical.ly had about 10 million daily active users and over 90 million total users, up from 10 million users in 2015.
“So now by 2016 musically is on fire. So they have 10 million DAU and over 90 million users up from 10 million the year before in 2015.”
2016
In August 2016 Mark Zuckerberg invited Alex Zhu to Menlo Park and expressed interest in acquiring Musical.ly, but the deal fell apart.
“it's been reported that in August of 2016, Zuck invites Alex, Alex moved back to Shanghai at this point to be full-time with the product and engineering team”
2017
ByteDance announced on November 10, 2017 that it was acquiring Musical.ly for between $800 million and $1 billion, beating Kuaishou and Tencent.
“it's announced on November 10th, 2017, that ByteDance, not Kwaisho or Tencent, is acquiring Musical.ly for between $800 million and a billion dollars.”
2017
At the time of the acquisition, Musical.ly had about 100 million monthly active users and TikTok/Douyin had about 500 million.
“And they're musically had 100 million monthly active users at this point. And of course, TikTok, because of the scale of China, TikTok slash Douyin had 500 million monthly active users.”
2017
One host calculated that the roughly $1 billion price for Musical.ly equaled about $10 per monthly active user, versus about $25 to $30 per US user that Facebook earns per year.
“But when you think about it, it's only $10 per monthly active user.”
2019
In late 2019 a CFIUS review was opened into ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, which had not been reviewed when it closed.
“So formally a CFIUS review has been opened on the musically acquisition, which of course was two years ago.”
Episodes