TikTok / Douyin

2016

Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, in 2014 — two years before the company launched Douyin in China; TikTok would follow internationally in 2017. ByteDance launches Douyin in China in September 2016; the international version TikTok ships in 2017 and merges with the U.S. lip-sync app Musical.ly in 2018. The For You Page — a machine-learned feed driven entirely by behavioural signal — becomes the most copied product idea of the decade.