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or visiting wise calm Welcome

1:23

to good bad billionaire from the BBC World

1:25

Service every episode we pick a billionaire and

1:27

we find out how they made them money

1:29

Then we judge them. Are they good

1:32

bad or just another billionaire? I'm Zing

1:34

sing and I'm a journalist author and podcaster

1:36

I'm Simon Jack. I'm the BBC's business editor

1:38

and on this episode We have one of

1:41

the richest people in the world whose name

1:43

you might not be familiar with but whose

1:45

product you almost certainly will be You

1:48

say almost certainly well, it is tick-tock

1:50

and I have to confess that

1:53

I am NOT a tick-tock subscriber I don't

1:55

have it on my phone, but I'm gonna

1:57

download it right now. I won't start my

1:59

tick-tock journey during this podcast.

2:02

And I think the billionaire creator Zhang

2:04

Yiming, the man behind TikTok, will be

2:06

very happy to hear he signed up

2:08

another customer. So while Simon is downloading

2:10

the app for the very first time,

2:12

let's quickly go over Zhang Yiming in

2:14

numbers. So he's 41 years old and

2:17

he's currently worth a very

2:19

cool $43 billion. Now this

2:21

makes him the second or

2:23

third richest person in China, depending on the day

2:25

you're looking it up. He founded the

2:27

tech company ByteDance, which I have heard

2:30

of because it became very politically sensitive

2:32

in the US. ByteDance makes apps, including

2:34

TikTok. ByteDance has also been called the

2:36

world's most valuable startup because it makes

2:38

TikTok, which also has over a

2:41

billion users worldwide and a new one. Okay, so

2:43

listen, whilst I'm downloading it, you tell me about

2:45

TikTok. What's it all about? So

2:48

TikTok, for those of you who

2:50

have been living under a rock, Oh, thank you. It

2:53

is one of those social media apps that

2:56

has exploded in popularity over the last few

2:58

years. So it really took off during the

3:00

pandemic when everyone was locked

3:02

at home, just scrolling through their phone.

3:04

And what it is, is basically a

3:06

never ending newsfeed of videos, videos from

3:08

all over the world, from all sorts

3:10

of different users. You don't even really

3:12

need to be following anyone for your

3:15

feed to be populated with videos that

3:17

TikTok thinks you will like. And it

3:19

turns out that TikTok is very good

3:21

at knowing what you're like. We'll discuss

3:23

its super powerful algorithm later on

3:25

in this episode. So in a way, this is

3:27

a story about the power

3:29

of AI, the power of algorithms, social

3:31

media, how they keep our attention, how

3:34

they drain our attention, how they shorten

3:36

our attention. Yes. And I actually do

3:38

think there is an argument you could mount

3:40

for TikTok dramatically reducing my attention span and

3:42

the attention span of people that I know.

3:45

It's also super addictive and super creative,

3:47

someone say. So young people really love

3:50

it. The reason why it's become so

3:52

successful is because people are just pumping

3:54

content into it nonstop and the algorithm

3:57

is very good at serving it to

3:59

people. Okay, the first thing it's offered up

4:01

to me is, choose

4:03

my interests. So comedy, animals,

4:06

fashion accessories, definitely no for that one. Pop

4:09

culture, yep. DIY and life

4:11

hacks, let's go for that one. Okay, but

4:13

the person behind it is the thing we

4:15

are discussing today. So Zhang

4:17

Yiming, apparently lives a very private life.

4:20

He's not a very flashy individual. No,

4:22

we actually don't have that much information about how he

4:24

spends his time and money. Oh, hang on a second,

4:26

sorry about that. Hang

4:29

on. TikTok just launches you straight

4:31

in there. Okay. So

4:33

we do know that Zhang is a big

4:35

admirer of Mark Zuckerberg. At one point, he

4:37

even styled himself like him by purchasing 99

4:40

T-shirts and wearing a new one every

4:42

day for 99 days. Presumably

4:44

this is some kind of life hack to save time.

4:46

Mark Zuckerberg, of course, founder of Facebook

4:48

and now Meta, which owns WhatsApp. It

4:50

owns, what's the other one again? Instagram.

4:52

Instagram, of course. And we've

4:55

already done him on our billionaire podcast. So

4:57

have listened to that one if you haven't

4:59

heard it yet. But unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who's

5:01

kept an iron grip on the company he

5:03

founded, Zhang stepped down from

5:05

the company he founded. In his last speech

5:07

at the company, he said some media want

5:09

to add drama when they report on startups

5:11

and people's stories by making experience

5:14

seem legendary or dramatizing people's characters. I

5:16

often said it was nothing special. We're very similar

5:18

to one another. We're all ordinary people. If

5:21

you keep an ordinary mind, accept yourself

5:23

as you are and do well for

5:25

yourself, you can often do things well.

5:27

Ordinary people can do extraordinary things. So

5:30

ordinary people, not really why we're here.

5:32

Yeah. Maybe he's very humble. Maybe he's

5:34

modest. Maybe he's just downplaying it. But

5:37

is he really such an ordinary guy? And

5:40

more importantly, is he good, bad, or just

5:42

another billionaire? Let's get back to the staff.

5:44

["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Zhang

5:49

Yiming was born in 1983 in Fujian Province, which

5:53

is a kind of Southeast region on the

5:55

coast in China. He was the only child of

5:57

civil servants. His mother was a nurse. His father

5:59

worked for... the city's Science and Technology

6:01

Commission. So he grew up in a

6:03

kind of scientific family. As a kid he heard

6:05

his dad talk about the latest technology at the

6:08

dinner table and that kind of gave him the

6:10

dream of being a scientist when he grew up.

6:12

He was a voracious reader. He read magazines

6:14

in kindergarten, apparently. By the time he was

6:16

a teenager he was reading around 25 newspapers

6:19

a week. I reckon I've got that beat but I'm not

6:21

a teenager. Yeah, I mean you'd have to be a

6:23

pretty big nerd to be reading 25 newspapers a

6:25

week in your teens. But he was

6:27

clearly very hungry for knowledge and actually

6:29

he said before if I could

6:31

have accessed Wikipedia and YouTube I would be so

6:33

much smarter than I am now. In

6:37

2001 when he had to choose a university Zhang

6:39

had a really specific set of criteria.

6:41

So first off the university obviously had

6:43

to be good and well respected. He

6:46

wanted to remain in China but it had to be

6:48

far away from his parents so they couldn't visit and

6:50

chastise him if he got bad results. Very clever.

6:52

It also had to be gender balanced

6:54

because he wanted to find a girlfriend. And it

6:56

had to have snow in winter because he'd never

6:59

seen it before. Also it had to be

7:01

near the coast because he wanted to eat good seafood. So

7:03

all in all quite the shopping list. This

7:05

leads to a lot of AI parameters for

7:07

what he might be interested in. So

7:09

it turns out that in China the only

7:11

university that fits all these criteria is somewhere

7:14

called Nan Cai University in Tianzei which is

7:16

a port city. Yeah, he wanted to study

7:18

biology but didn't get the grades needed so

7:20

he ended up doing software engineering. Who knew

7:23

you need better grades to do biology than

7:25

software engineering? But of course this

7:27

change in plans gave him the

7:29

opportunity to, as he puts it,

7:31

apply textbook theory to real life

7:33

applications. He described his first years

7:35

at university as lonely and boring. He didn't

7:37

like playing games or drinking like his classmates

7:40

and he didn't want to join clubs or

7:42

group activities. But he did

7:44

create a very lucrative sideline in fixing

7:46

his fellow students' computers and this actually

7:48

became the stuff of his first business.

7:51

Yeah, it earned him between £2,000 to £3,000 a month

7:53

which is around $250 to $360 which is

7:58

quite a lot of money for a student at that time. And

8:00

for someone who was relatively unsociable, it

8:02

also helped him to meet people because

8:04

he'd be able to say, hi, I

8:06

installed your computer. And crucially, it introduced

8:08

him to his girlfriend, a woman called

8:10

Lioutin, when he fixed a computer and

8:12

she is now his wife. So

8:15

the root to the woman's heart is fixing her

8:17

computer. Depends on how badly your

8:19

computer runs, but sure. He also

8:21

became close to his roommate, Liang Rubo,

8:24

and they shared a computer, they programmed

8:26

together, they played badminton at weekends, and

8:29

he's still around. He's currently CEO

8:31

of ByteDance. So there were

8:33

two key partners at university that he

8:35

met, one romantic, one business.

8:37

And in 2005, after graduating,

8:39

Zhang spends a few years in the

8:41

tech industry. Yeah, first he tried to start

8:44

a software company with two school friends. They

8:46

weren't able to market it successfully, it quickly

8:48

failed. Then he joined a

8:50

new tech startup, Ku Shen. Within months,

8:52

he went from engineer to managing 50

8:55

people. He ended up leaving that company

8:57

to join Microsoft's Asian Research Lab in

9:00

Beijing. But there he only lasted a

9:02

few months. Yeah, he found the

9:04

work so unchallenging, he says, that he spent

9:06

half his time reading books, including biographies of

9:08

entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, and

9:11

guides like Stephen Covey, seven habits of

9:13

highly effective people. And I'm so ineffective,

9:15

I've never read that book. I'm sure

9:17

Microsoft will also be thrilled to know that

9:19

the founder of ByteDance found their work in

9:22

Beijing completely unstimulating. So

9:24

on leaving, he briefly joined something called

9:26

Fanfu, a Twitter style social media site.

9:28

But that was shut down temporarily in

9:30

2009, due to censorship of websites by

9:32

the Chinese government

9:34

after the government claimed that rioting

9:37

in the city of Urumqi was

9:39

organised online. Interesting. Now,

9:41

this is even more interesting because Zhang actually

9:43

blogged about those restrictions at the time. And

9:45

he said, go out and wear a t-shirt

9:48

supporting Google if you block the internet, I'll

9:50

write what I want to say on my

9:52

clothes. Brave. I'm pretty rebellious.

9:54

Yeah, but he's about to be headhunted by

9:56

an investor who is going to change his

9:58

life. Now, this is a about mobile

10:00

apps like TikTok. So let's do a little

10:02

bit of context setting at this point. Yes,

10:05

in 2007, Apple had just released

10:07

the first iPhone and Zhang said, I was shocked

10:09

when I bought it. I could build a website,

10:11

I could write a program on it. And by

10:13

2011, China surpassed

10:15

the US to become the world's biggest

10:18

smartphone market with just under a billion

10:20

smartphone users. And the rise

10:22

of smartphones completely revolutionised how users

10:24

received information in China. So people

10:26

were moving away from desktop computers

10:29

to cell phones. But at this

10:31

point, these apps operating on smartphones,

10:33

they weren't great. Yeah, it's also

10:36

probably important to note that newspapers, radio,

10:38

television are and were

10:40

regulated by the Chinese government. But the government

10:42

was not so good at regulating the huge

10:44

number of sites appearing on the internet. They

10:47

weren't quite at the races when it came

10:49

to regulating that. And one

10:51

day Zhang was watching commuters in Beijing,

10:53

completely absorbed by their phones. And he

10:55

had this kind of light

10:57

bulb moment. He said, I noticed that fewer

11:00

and fewer people were reading newspapers on subways.

11:02

I thought smartphones could replace newspapers

11:04

to become the most important medium

11:06

of information distribution. So he decided

11:09

to start a mobile news app.

11:11

At which point I'm going to give you

11:13

a news flash because I have successfully downloaded

11:15

TikTok. Excellent. I'm scrolling, I'm swiping up rather

11:17

than left or right. Someone is

11:20

filming their luggage coming

11:22

around a carousel at an airport.

11:24

Fascinating. I

11:26

feel like maybe TikTok hasn't quite nailed your

11:28

interest. Well, I've only been on 10 minutes.

11:31

So basically, the algorithm hasn't quite got into

11:33

my brain yet. No, yeah. Keep scrolling. Keep

11:35

scrolling, man. I'll talk about the investor

11:37

who basically changed Zhang's life. So now

11:39

we're back to 2009 and Zhang has

11:42

been headhunted by this investor called Joan

11:44

Wang. And she remembers him being this

11:46

top engineer from Kushan and she persuades

11:48

him to come be a CEO at

11:50

a new sister startup called 99fang.com. It

11:54

is essentially a real estate search engine. She

11:56

was right in her instincts because after two years of

11:58

running the company, his chief executive of 99fang.com

12:00

was the largest real estate search

12:03

site in China. But

12:05

one day Zhang asks Joan to meet

12:07

him for a coffee and they talk

12:09

about AI and Zhang's idea for this

12:11

news aggregation app. He maps it all

12:14

out on a napkin and Joan is

12:16

actually very understanding of her colleague's moonshot

12:18

idea. She writes to her colleagues at

12:21

the investment company saying that Zhang seeks

12:23

their understanding and permission to leave 99fang

12:25

and start his new company. But she

12:28

put some money where her mouth is as well.

12:30

She made 80,000 US dollar angel investment in the

12:32

new company. So in March 2012 Zhang

12:34

officially co-founded the new company called

12:37

Bite Dance which we know today

12:39

with his old university pal and

12:41

badminton partner Yang Rubo. They

12:43

rent a four bedroom apartment and they

12:45

live and they work on Bite Dance's

12:47

various apps. That's so typical of the

12:49

kind of tech bro kind of scene isn't it? They all

12:51

sort of live in the same house together. I know I

12:53

really shudder to think what the bathroom looks like. But

12:56

in the real world of finance they had

12:58

raised five million dollars. Three million came from

13:01

the Jones investment company SIG Asia, the rest

13:03

coming from Chinese venture capitalist and some from

13:05

Zhang himself. Now it's not clear

13:07

exactly how much he invested personally but he

13:10

sold his own apartment to contribute which means

13:12

he's probably not a millionaire yet. But

13:14

he has just set up Bite Dance, the company

13:16

that will go on to make him billions. Selling

13:20

your apartment and putting all the money in,

13:22

that's a ballsy move. Yeah, essentially moving

13:24

in with your colleagues. Yeah, you're sacrificing

13:26

your personal life for your business life.

13:28

What kind of person does that? So,

13:31

he rarely does interviews. He's very private.

13:33

There's actually however a video of him

13:35

and Liang visiting the apartment they used

13:37

as an office. You kind of get

13:39

a sense of how mild mannered and

13:41

unassuming he is. He's in

13:43

this kind of zip up hoodie with middle aged

13:45

dad glasses. I mean he looks more like someone

13:48

picking you up from gym class than a

13:50

billionaire tech entrepreneur. And he's been

13:52

described as a gentleman, down to

13:54

earth, nerdy and unintimidating. Not your

13:56

typical billionaire that we've come across.

13:59

But he has also... competition,

16:00

because there were other news porters like NetEase

16:02

and Soho, which had 200 million

16:04

users. And Tokyo had faced more

16:07

than 100 lawsuits from newspapers, other content

16:09

makers who claimed their content was used

16:11

without permission. This is obviously, in

16:13

our world of journalism, this is a big deal,

16:15

right? Exactly. And in a few

16:17

cases, ByteDance actually had to pay content

16:19

creators for using their work. Yeah.

16:22

And even while ByteDance apps were

16:24

growing in popularity, Zhang struggled to

16:27

find new investors. Yeah, Joan

16:29

introduced him to at least 20 Chinese

16:31

venture capitalists. No one was interested.

16:34

They were apparently very unimpressed by Zhang. They

16:36

thought he was too young and mouthed man

16:38

as not like that confident, outgoing entrepreneurs that

16:41

they were used to. Okay, quick pick

16:43

stop. Can I go back to my TikTok feed here? Yes,

16:45

let's see what they've learned about. Okay, this is interesting.

16:47

This is some comment I can really get behind. They've

16:50

got to pick someone going down the M4

16:52

past Heathrow Airport, and they've got a big

16:55

sign up saying, slow down speed limit for

16:57

air quality. And the comment is only in

16:59

London could they impose a 60 mile an

17:01

hour speed limit for air quality on a

17:03

motorway running next to the world's busiest dual

17:05

runway airport. I'm liking that. Yeah,

17:08

TikTok's now got what, a hit rate of one out

17:10

of four or three for you? Yeah, because

17:12

I lingered quite a long time because we were

17:14

chatting, they'll push a lot of air

17:16

travel related stuff my way. Exactly, or car

17:19

stuff. Okay. Anyway, after failing

17:21

with Chinese venture capitalists, they put out

17:23

the idea to global investors and finally

17:25

one agreed to a meeting, a man

17:27

called Yuri Milner. So he's

17:30

definitely someone we need to do on this

17:32

podcast because he is an Israeli Russian billionaire

17:34

who's been called the world's most successful investor

17:36

in social media. We definitely need to put

17:38

him on the list. Yeah, at one point he

17:40

earned 8% of Facebook, 5% of Twitter.

17:42

The New York Times has reported he gets

17:44

hundreds of millions directly from the Kremlin. We

17:47

cannot confirm or deny that. So

17:49

clearly a man with quite a lot of

17:51

geopolitical intrigue attached to him. But

17:54

either way, Yang impressed him because

17:56

Yuri understood the potential of this

17:58

algorithm for social media. So,

18:00

Yuri invested in the company, raising £10

18:03

million, along with Joan Wang, he's one

18:05

of his first investors company, SIG Asia.

18:07

Do you think that investment from Yuri

18:09

is worth more than just the money?

18:11

It's about the kind of credibility and

18:13

reputation that comes attached to someone, with

18:16

someone like that. I

18:18

think that's true. I think that if you, for example,

18:20

get the blessing of some of the tech

18:22

gods, like Sequoia Capital,

18:24

for example, or Andreessen

18:27

Horowitz and people like that, these are people

18:29

who have successfully made billions out of investing

18:31

in the companies of the future. If

18:34

they give you their blessing, that means you do

18:36

have a certain amount of credibility, you have a

18:38

sort of aura about you, because these are the

18:40

smartest people in the world and they've decided they

18:42

want to be on your team. So it's kind

18:44

of unclear how much money at this point Zhang

18:47

had personally, but ByteDance was valued at $60 million

18:49

in 2013. So safe

18:51

to say he's probably a millionaire at this

18:53

point. Yeah, millionaire, well done. But he's got

18:56

quite a few failures ahead of him before

18:58

he reaches that magical billion to be on

19:00

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20:26

remember, at this point, he still hasn't

20:28

yet created TikTok, but he has this

20:30

news app Toutiao, which is doing

20:33

okay. But he's in a competitive field.

20:35

Everyone's trying to be the next big app. They've

20:37

seen fortunes made in this space. So

20:39

Zhang understands that to stand out in a crowded

20:41

market, he needs to make a product that people

20:44

really love. So he poaches

20:46

a new vice president of technology for a

20:48

competitor who came along and instigated a technical

20:50

upgrade, and soon more engineers were jumping ship

20:52

to join them. So this rise

20:55

in the quality of the app persuaded more

20:57

users to get on board, which persuaded more

20:59

venture catalysts to invest in ByteDance. So by

21:01

2014, it was valued at half

21:03

a billion, but still not quite there yet.

21:05

Yeah, the money is following the users, but

21:08

Zhang now decides he wants to take

21:10

ByteDance global. In 2015,

21:12

he launched an English language news

21:14

app called TopBuzz, but it fails

21:16

to take off. He desperately wants to

21:19

break into America. That's really hard with

21:21

a news aggregation app. For one thing,

21:23

they face stricter copyright laws. And

21:25

a strategy report suggests the outlook for

21:27

the international push looks bad, but Zhang

21:29

refuses to give up. And something

21:31

new was about to revolutionise the

21:34

app market, and that was short-form

21:36

video. So in 2013,

21:38

an American short-form video app

21:40

called Vine launches. Vine

21:43

is, well, was actually, because it sadly is

21:45

no longer with us, is very short. You

21:47

think TikTok is short. Vine was only about

21:49

maybe maximum six seconds long, looping videos that

21:51

just like went on and on and on.

21:54

But it was massively popular back then, wasn't

21:56

it? It was huge. Within two years

21:58

of launch, it had... 200

22:01

million daily users and it

22:03

was strangely influential in its times.

22:06

In 2014, I'm told, another

22:08

video app launched called Musically.

22:11

It's musical.ly and that focused

22:14

on lip-syncing, short musicals. It was a

22:16

Chinese company but within two years it

22:18

had nearly 50 million American users under

22:20

the age of 21 and

22:22

that is amazingly nearly half of all

22:25

the teens and pre-teens in the USA.

22:27

Now these apps, Vine and Musically,

22:30

were tapping into a much younger

22:32

market than a news app, for

22:34

instance like Total.ly and that success

22:36

was partly down to novelty because

22:38

prior to these apps, video hadn't

22:40

really worked very smoothly. But

22:42

also young people love their easy-to-use

22:45

editing features. It inspired huge creativity

22:47

in teenagers who were making comedy

22:49

videos, music videos, funny

22:51

memes. So ByteDance decides

22:53

to try and steal some of Musically's

22:56

thunder. It launches a very similar app

22:58

which they called Douyin which in translates

23:00

to shaky beat in Chinese. And this

23:03

is the app that we now know as TikTok

23:05

essentially? Yes, exactly. Douyin is sort of

23:07

the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. So of

23:09

the 2000 ByteDance staff, a

23:11

team of only 10 engineers

23:13

were assigned to work on Douyin. They

23:15

launched it in September 2016 after

23:18

developing it for just 200 days which sounds

23:21

pretty quick. It is pretty quick I would

23:24

say and it also meant that Douyin had

23:26

a lot of technical glitches so it wasn't

23:28

very popular. And one creator, when asked to

23:30

join the app, told Douyin, your

23:32

product is too basic. You want to get

23:34

on the highway with this broken old car?

23:36

Oh, burn. Feel the burn. But

23:39

in the meantime their other app, Tuqiao, is

23:41

doing very well in China. It's becoming the

23:43

leading news app there which means ByteDance was

23:45

able to raise a billion dollars in funding

23:47

in early 2017. So they're moving into the

23:49

big leagues now. And Zhang used

23:51

this money to give Douyin a bit

23:53

of a revamp. The tech improved, the

23:55

app rebranded with what is now that

23:57

iconic quite glitchy musical note logo you

23:59

recognise. from TikTok. They added

24:01

filters, they made editing simpler, they

24:04

made basically the whole user experience

24:06

more engaging. And also they

24:08

positioned the app as a more

24:11

upmarket product which appealed to young

24:13

Chinese living in cities, urban elites.

24:15

They sponsored music shows on Chinese television,

24:17

including a hip-hop reality show called The

24:20

Wrap of China. One of the contestants,

24:22

Vava, then touted as China's answer to

24:24

Rihanna, said, all the people into hip-hop

24:26

are all on Douyin. And

24:28

it's kind of like this virtuous circle, right?

24:31

So the more people that you go in,

24:33

the more the algorithm learns what they like,

24:35

the more the algorithm pushes content they might

24:37

watch and they encourage people to stay longer

24:39

on the platform, etc, etc. It's like a

24:41

snake eating its tail. And on it goes. And

24:43

Zhang could see the potential for the video app.

24:45

And as a tech insider said, he threw more

24:47

money at it than any other company and dared

24:49

to hunt down the very best people. He

24:52

actually also made it compulsory for management

24:54

teams to upload their own content to

24:56

TikTok to understand how the platform works.

24:58

He even downloaded his own videos, which he admitted

25:00

was a big step for me. And

25:02

those people with the least number of likes actually had

25:04

to do push-ups to make up for it. I

25:07

mean, it's bringing sort of military discipline to

25:09

bear on something like social media seems nuts

25:11

to me, like down and 10. You didn't

25:13

get enough likes for your dog picture. All

25:18

this meant that Douyin became a more

25:20

successful app. Within a year, they had

25:22

100 million users in China. Okay,

25:24

let's do a quick tally here.

25:26

He's now got two hugely successful

25:29

apps, Douyin and Toutiao. Both are

25:31

just there within the Chinese market.

25:33

So in 2017, ByteDance

25:35

buys competitor Musical.ly for $1 billion

25:38

in order to enter the US

25:40

market. While Musical.ly is a Chinese

25:42

competitor, it has a pretty big

25:44

global audience. And this acquisition is

25:46

what gives them 200 million users

25:49

worldwide. And it also kills the

25:51

competition, right? Yeah. And so a

25:53

week after buying Musical.ly, Forbes declared

25:55

Zhang was a billionaire. Age 33,

25:57

he's worth $4 billion. just

26:00

five years after he

26:02

founded the parent company Bightdowns. Wow, that's quick.

26:19

Right after becoming a billionaire, Zhang launches the

26:21

app that we all now know in summer

26:23

2018. Doi-In is now

26:25

launched worldwide under the name TikTok. It

26:28

migrates all Musical.ly's accounts to TikTok and

26:30

within months the parent company Bightdance is

26:32

valued at a cool 75 billion dollars

26:36

making it the world's biggest privately

26:38

backed startup company. And in

26:41

six months of launching TikTok

26:43

it surpasses one billion downloads.

26:46

So let's see why it's so popular. As you

26:48

know I am a new person to TikTok. I'm

26:50

looking at it now. I've probably been on it

26:52

now for about half an hour, 40 minutes ago.

26:55

And because I've been chatting

26:57

to you I've been staying on pages

26:59

kind of rather randomly which all seem

27:01

to involve cars or planes. And

27:04

it's a full screen image of

27:07

a video which basically loops itself

27:09

around and all I do is swipe

27:11

upwards and I get another one. So if I'm bored of

27:13

that one I do another one. Bored of that one I

27:15

do another one. And I suppose

27:17

that is the kind of attention

27:19

span threat that some people say

27:22

TikTok poses. So far I'm

27:24

enjoying it I think. Do you

27:26

remember the videos you watched four videos ago? I

27:30

remember one of them. One of them was about

27:32

saying how on earth do you have a

27:34

60 mile an hour speed limit on a

27:36

motorway in order to preserve air

27:38

quality when you're going past one

27:41

of the world's biggest airports? That's actually really impressive

27:43

because I can tell you that when I go

27:45

on TikTok I could sit on there for half

27:47

an hour. I could probably tell you maybe one

27:49

or two videos in detail that

27:51

I've watched. But I'm new to it. The rot

27:53

hasn't set in yet. Yes the brain rot hasn't set

27:56

in. But I mean TikTok is hugely popular.

27:58

I think part of it is also because

28:00

of the algorithm. It's very good at serving

28:02

you content that it thinks you will like.

28:06

And also, you know, viral memes,

28:08

viral culture, basically, all emerges from

28:10

TikTok nowadays. And its influence

28:12

extends right across loads of different

28:14

industries. Exactly. I mean, in music

28:17

alone, it's launched the careers of people,

28:19

you know, Lil Nas X became huge

28:21

because of his song, Old Town Road,

28:24

which became big on TikTok. It changes

28:26

who becomes famous. Random

28:28

people on TikTok can just suddenly become

28:30

the most talked about people on the platform.

28:32

You know, there's a really famous guy called

28:35

Dogface, who went viral for skateboarding

28:37

and drinking cranberry juice while lip-syncing

28:39

along to Dreams by

28:41

Fleetwood Mac, completely random. But I guarantee you

28:43

will be recognised on the street for years

28:46

to come. I'm kidding me. It's like there's

28:48

an alternative reality out there, which I do

28:50

not recognise. There's what happens over there. And

28:52

there's what happens in what I

28:54

would call the real world. Yeah, it's like a kind

28:56

of like through the looking glass kind of experience. For

28:58

many people, I think TikTok now is the

29:01

real world. Gosh, okay. Well, anyway,

29:03

TikTok is becoming such a powerful

29:05

and popular cultural force. Concerns

29:08

started being raised. You always get when

29:10

something comes that popular, the backlash starts.

29:12

Most were that TikTok could

29:14

be collecting sensitive data from user that could

29:17

be used by the Chinese government for spying.

29:19

You know, there was a war of words

29:21

between the US and China. And this was

29:23

another front in that tension, right? This geopolitical

29:26

tension. Exactly. In 2020, so

29:28

under Trump, the United States Department of

29:31

Justice caught Zhang a mouthpiece of the

29:33

Chinese Communist Party in illegal filing, which

29:35

is something that bite down strenuously denied.

29:37

Another concern that was raised was the

29:40

possibility of censorship or the app being

29:42

used to influence public debates. TikTok is

29:44

one of the first platforms many young

29:46

people share social activism content on.

29:49

And in 2019, The Guardian reported

29:51

that TikTok actually censored material deemed

29:53

to be politically sensitive, including footage

29:56

of Tiananmen Square protests and Tibetan

29:58

independence demands. Bite down. has said

30:00

that guidelines like this have actually been phased

30:02

out and that all moderation is done independently

30:04

of Beijing. But in 2020, TikTok

30:07

was actually banned in India, along

30:09

with 59 other Chinese apps over

30:11

security concerns. This is

30:13

following escalating tensions along the disputed

30:15

border between the two powers. India

30:18

had been TikTok's biggest foreign market.

30:20

It's really causing geopolitical ruckions this.

30:23

And again, ByteDance has strenuously denied

30:25

all these claims, but it seems

30:27

that this app just cannot stop

30:29

that being pulled into huge debates

30:31

about world powers. It's amazing. You've got people

30:33

in White House and in Washington talking about a

30:36

social media app all the time. It's central,

30:39

it's seen, as being influencing

30:41

behavior, thought, trends.

30:44

And politics. And politics. As

30:46

the scrutiny grows around TikTok,

30:49

Zhang is actually making a surprise move. In

30:51

2021, he announces he's

30:54

stepping down as CEO and chairman

30:56

from ByteDance and his university roommate

30:58

and co-founder Liang Rubo becomes CEO.

31:00

Yeah. And Zhang actually

31:02

wrote an open letter announcing he was

31:04

stepping down, outlining the reasons why he

31:06

was leaving. We can listen to a

31:08

section from this letter, which was translated

31:10

on the BBC World Service. Have a

31:13

listen to this. The truth is, I

31:15

lack some of the skills that make

31:17

an ideal manager. I'm more interested in

31:19

analyzing organizational and market principles. I'm not

31:21

very social. I prefer solitary activities like

31:23

being online, reading, listening to music and

31:25

daydreaming. What do we make of that? I

31:28

just love that someone who's a

31:30

multi-billionaire can list his hobbies as being

31:32

online, reading, listening

31:34

to music and daydreaming. I mean, same, you

31:36

know, I just don't have a billion dollars

31:39

to my name. But I can count on

31:41

the fingers of one hand, possibly one finger,

31:44

of bosses who say, I lack some of the

31:46

skills that make an ideal manager. You don't hear

31:48

that every day. No, it's true. And definitely not

31:50

from someone who is both the

31:53

CEO and founder of the app that

31:55

he created. But it's interesting at

31:57

this point, because he's one of at least

31:59

five top Chinese executives who stepped

32:01

down around this same time as

32:03

part of the government's regulations, either stepped

32:05

up or changed. So according

32:08

to analysts, the Chinese government had

32:10

become increasingly concerned about the power

32:12

and influence amassed by wealthy tech

32:14

entrepreneurs who were multi-billionaires, aka people

32:16

like Zhang. Yeah, so basically you're on

32:18

the radar of the government, try and get off

32:20

the radar. Yeah, exactly. Actually, since 2020,

32:23

the Chinese government

32:25

has launched antitrust data, labor regulations. They

32:27

find companies with monopolistic practices restricted consumers'

32:29

internet use. So really, this is part

32:31

of a broader crackdown on the Chinese

32:34

internet. And that's kind of what has

32:36

happened to Zhang because today at the

32:38

age of 41, he doesn't

32:40

even live in China. He's relocated to Singapore,

32:43

even though he still has Chinese citizenship. Yeah,

32:45

he's been described as reclusive, but he's still thought

32:48

to have over 20% of the shares

32:50

of ByteDance. That makes him worth

32:53

$43 billion. Yeah, but

32:55

the future of that fortune is very

32:57

unclear because in April 2024, President

33:00

Joe Biden signed into law a bill

33:02

that gives ByteDance nine months to sell

33:04

TikTok to a non-Chinese company, or the

33:06

app will be blocked in the US.

33:08

And the US is obviously one of

33:10

their biggest markets. This is the coalface

33:13

of geopolitical tension, this, and ByteDance has

33:15

found itself right in the middle of

33:17

it because TikTok called this legislation an

33:19

unconstitutional ban and a front to the

33:21

US right to free speech. And it

33:23

would give social media rivals more power

33:25

and put thousands of American jobs at

33:27

risk. And at the time

33:29

of recording, the US appeals court is still

33:31

yet to hear TikTok's case against the ban.

33:34

So it's very much a case of watch

33:36

this space. Okay. And I'm watching this

33:38

space on my phone. And I've just

33:40

seen a Ferrari driving through

33:42

the middle of London. I don't know what... I think so

33:44

you're a car guy. I know. How can I do this?

33:46

What do I need to do to try and get out

33:48

of this rock? You need to swipe through as many

33:51

car videos as quickly as possible. Okay. Um, there's the

33:54

Grand Canyon. There's a burnt

33:56

out car. Here's a four and a half. It's too

33:58

late. I'm done. I'm in Oh, they've lost

34:00

you. That's it. Forever, I'll be associated with

34:02

that. Anyway,

34:05

I can see the appeal of it because if you

34:08

get bored of that, you just flick, flick, flick,

34:10

flick, flick, flick. Doom scrolling,

34:12

is that what they call it? Yes, it is very

34:14

much a case of doom scrolling. Although I think TikTok

34:16

would argue that it's a case of joy scrolling because

34:18

it gives you the videos that you really want to

34:21

watch. Joy scrolling, that's a new line on me. Let's

34:23

judge this person because we've got some categories we

34:25

need to run through. So

34:32

we have to

34:35

judge our billionaire.

34:39

This is the point where we basically

34:41

mark them out of 10 in a

34:43

series of categories. On wealth. So

34:47

he's the second or third richest person in China,

34:49

and he's actually the second richest social

34:52

media billionaire behind his hero Mark Zuckerberg.

34:54

Yeah, $43 billion. That

34:56

puts him very much in the first division, doesn't

34:58

it? Yeah, it really does. So I would give

35:01

him probably seven out of 10. I mean, he

35:03

doesn't wear it in a very huge way. Well,

35:05

that's the thing. Sometimes when people haven't got that

35:07

much money, it's $43 billion, but they do think

35:09

really extravagant things like fly

35:11

their nail technician on a private

35:13

jet because they need their nails done. We

35:15

give them extra points to that, don't we?

35:17

We do. So I think we have

35:20

to deduct points from Zhang because he's not the type to

35:22

do that. It's a seven from me for sure. Now,

35:25

what about rags to riches? How far has

35:27

Zhang traveled to get to where he is?

35:29

Was he poor growing up? I

35:31

don't think he was from a solidly technocratic

35:33

middle class kind of family of the way

35:36

I would describe it, although I don't quite

35:38

understand the social stratification in China. Yeah,

35:40

I would say that he had a

35:43

comfortable upbringing, like not particularly upper class

35:45

or well off, but, you know, fine.

35:48

The way he set out the conditions for

35:50

which university he was going to attend, like

35:53

not near my parents so they can come and check up on me.

35:55

He's got to be somewhere where it snows because I've never seen it

35:57

before. It needs to be near the sea. That's

36:01

quite picky. Yeah, it really is. So

36:05

I would say, you know, I

36:07

mean, it is a great story. He's gone from not

36:10

one of the best ranked universities in China

36:13

to being one of the richest people in

36:15

the country and also the center of all

36:17

this geopolitical intrigue. So in that sense, it's

36:20

quite the journey. It's not so much where

36:22

he's come from. It's where he's reached in

36:24

terms of what he's achieved. I'm going to

36:26

give him a six. Yeah, I would

36:28

give him a six as well. Well, I

36:30

mean, who knows what's going to happen to him in his future.

36:32

Yeah. We also have a

36:34

category called villainy. What have they done along the

36:36

way to get there? Have they done people over?

36:39

Have they been particularly ruthless or been

36:41

active corporate malfeasance or anything like that? I think

36:43

in one of these things, we've done it before.

36:45

We have to separate the person from the company

36:48

because he seems pretty in

36:51

a way kind of chilled out, nondescript, kind

36:53

of clever guy who founded a company which

36:55

has grown like a monster, you know, in

36:58

its own way. And so

37:00

you can probably like Zhang, you mean,

37:03

and hate

37:05

TikTok or

37:07

vice versa. So I mean,

37:09

as a person, it doesn't sound like he's a

37:11

particular villain, but your view of

37:13

his contribution to the world will depend

37:15

on what your view of contribution to

37:17

society of TikTok is. So Zhang he

37:19

means very private and we actually don't

37:21

know that much about him. So

37:24

I feel like I have to judge this

37:26

category based on TikTok alone because that's the

37:28

thing that he created. That's the thing he's

37:30

known for. Fine. OK, I think that's fair

37:33

enough. So we've talked about some of the

37:35

concerns that have been raised by people about

37:37

TikTok earlier in this episode, but there have

37:39

also been deaths linked to various challenges that

37:41

have gone viral on TikTok and various lawsuits

37:43

have been brought against the company. Now,

37:46

none have been upheld, but there are

37:48

currently still various lawsuits against TikTok being

37:50

brought by parents in France and the

37:52

US who accuse TikTok of pushing content

37:55

about suicide to their children, both since

37:57

taking their own lives. A TikTok spokesperson

37:59

recently told. American news broadcaster NBC that

38:01

while the company couldn't comment on ongoing

38:04

litigation, TikTok continues to take industry-leading steps

38:06

to provide a safe and positive experience

38:08

for teens. They note that teen accounts

38:10

are set to private by default and

38:13

that teens have an opt-out 60-minute screen

38:15

time allowance before they're prompted to enter

38:17

a passcode. Yeah, and

38:19

also worth mentioning that TikTok does

38:21

have clear policies against users publishing

38:23

content showing, promoting or providing instructions

38:26

on suicide or self-harm and related

38:28

challenges, dares, games and packs including

38:30

naming or describing methods, showing or

38:32

promoting suicide or self-harm hoaxes and

38:34

sharing plans for suicide or self-harm.

38:36

In a way it feels to

38:38

me, and I might

38:41

be wrong about this and people can get in touch with

38:43

us, that once you start

38:45

something like a TikTok which is

38:47

algorithmically led, which basically is fed

38:49

by its own users likes and

38:51

what have you, you kind

38:54

of unleash this genie out of the bottle

38:56

and it does its own thing. And the

38:58

other thing that people like Facebook have always

39:00

said is that, you know, we're not publishers,

39:03

we're just a platform, we're not subject to

39:05

the same rules as, for example, a newspaper

39:07

or a TV station like BBC or would

39:10

be, and that's been a

39:12

contentious thing saying, you know, you're abrogating your

39:14

responsibility for the content that's going into people's

39:16

brains and minds and into their lives and

39:19

that's, I suppose, the frontier of that entire

39:21

argument. Yeah, I definitely think that in the

39:23

same way Facebook has had to deal with

39:25

issues of responsibility and questions of whether

39:27

you're a publisher who's responsible for the

39:29

content versus just merely the platform that

39:32

hosts it, I think TikTok is very

39:34

much at the beginning of that journey

39:36

with lawmakers. And the criticism is that

39:38

some of these companies are

39:40

very good at using AI to generate users

39:42

and traffic and all that kind of stuff,

39:44

but they're not as good at using AI

39:46

when it comes to moderating the content, taking

39:48

down stuff which might be offensive or harmful,

39:51

you know, why aren't you as good that

39:53

bit as you are at generating the traffic

39:55

in the first place. Especially when you've got

39:57

a billion dollar app. Yeah, exactly. So, okay,

40:00

I'm gonna say personally he's not

40:02

a villain at all. So

40:04

I'm gonna give him a three as a person

40:07

TikTok obviously listen, I'm early on

40:09

in my career with TikTok. I

40:12

don't find it offensive And

40:14

it's being blamed for the terrible

40:17

attention span of people including my

40:19

own family members and

40:21

This stuff takes out more of a chunk of your

40:24

day than we've ever seen anything do like that before

40:26

and I'm not sure that's an Entirely good thing. Oh,

40:28

I took good. Come on Hmm.

40:30

How do I feel about TikTok? It actually varies

40:32

depending on the day. There will be some days

40:34

where I look at TikTok I'm like, this

40:37

is so much fun. I'm learning so much

40:39

I'm being really entertained and then

40:41

there's some days where I look at the amount of time I

40:43

spent on TikTok and thought god I could have read war and

40:45

peace Okay, you know, so I

40:48

think it actually has had an impact

40:51

on people's attention spans But then the problem is

40:53

is that if doing in and

40:55

take talk didn't exist someone else would have invented

40:57

it Someone else would have also created the magic

40:59

algorithm. Yeah, that sucked people in that's true

41:01

So it's not it's not a sort of

41:03

discrete malevolent act. It's kind of like it

41:05

was gonna happen That gets the nature of

41:08

the media. Yeah, exactly But

41:10

I would say that you know For

41:12

the amount that it's done to kind of pull people

41:14

away from traditional media sources Even though you

41:16

know people like the BBC are already on

41:18

tik-tok. Yeah, I would give it maybe

41:21

a seven Okay, it's a challenge to

41:23

media in the same way that I think meta

41:25

is but but you know when we talked at

41:27

the beginning of This series about how one of

41:29

the interesting things about billionaires and their incredible success

41:32

is they sort of hold up a mirror to

41:34

us Of what it is. We

41:36

want or enjoy or you know are hooked on

41:39

So no one's forcing us to watch

41:41

these videos We are

41:43

obviously part of the engine which

41:45

generates tik-tok success So maybe it's

41:47

naive or kind of wrong to

41:49

blame the app itself. Maybe that we're to blame

41:51

I don't know I do think and

41:54

I see this in my generation as

41:56

well that because tik-tok is fed with

41:58

user content mostly user generation content.

42:01

It's created this kind of strange attitude

42:03

in which everyone and everything in life

42:05

is up for filming. And

42:07

I don't know if you've ever encountered, you

42:09

know, when you go on holiday and suddenly

42:11

everyone's on their phones capturing content. I think

42:13

maybe taking photos for Instagram was one thing,

42:15

but taking video for me, you know, I've

42:17

seen people taking video of strangers

42:20

on the street who are stumbling around drunk and laughing

42:23

and putting it up. I mean the whole thing kind

42:25

of feels like a new breach of the social

42:27

contract. Maybe, yeah. It's interesting if you go

42:29

to a concert as well, you know, just

42:31

look at all the phones and sometimes the,

42:33

you know, singers of the acts have to

42:35

beg people to put their phones down just

42:37

for a few seconds. Okay, so on Villainy

42:39

I'm gonna give them five straight down the

42:42

middle. You're gonna give seven. Okay, interesting, interesting

42:44

split there. Philanthropy,

42:46

how much good have they done? How much

42:48

money have they of their vast wealth they've

42:50

given away? So Zhang is

42:52

very private about his spending and

42:54

but he has publicly donated to

42:56

various charitable causes including 100 million

42:59

to education in his hometown, 14 million

43:02

to the Chinese Red Cross for medical

43:04

workers. He's also thrown his

43:06

former university and called seven million and

43:09

given 10 million to help develop a

43:11

COVID-19 vaccine. Okay, I'm topping all that up. 140, 120, 131

43:13

million. Not bad but in context 43 billion. We don't know the full

43:24

extent of what he's been up to so I

43:26

would say I'm gonna give that a so far

43:30

work to date on philanthropy four out of

43:33

ten. Yeah, I would

43:35

say maybe, I mean how much

43:37

of that is a proportion of overall wealth?

43:39

Not tons. Okay, so it's one two hundred

43:41

and fortieth of his wealth doing a little maths

43:43

in my mind. Okay, surely that's, it's got to

43:45

be a few. It's a two. Okay, power. In

43:47

2019 Zhang was named one of

43:49

the Time

43:53

magazine's 100 most influential people.

43:55

Do we agree? I mean

43:57

at the height of his power when he was...

44:00

heading up ByteDance. Yeah, probably,

44:02

but not now he's in kind

44:04

of effective seclusion in Singapore, right? I

44:06

don't think he ever wanted to be powerful. He

44:08

made this thing that had enormous power, was

44:11

Mark Zuckerberg, you get feeling is

44:13

still very hands-on, can change the algorithm if

44:15

he wants to, can moderate humanity in the

44:17

way they interact with each other. I think

44:19

think he's anywhere near that and doesn't want

44:21

to be anywhere near that. So I would

44:23

actually give him a, I'd say

44:26

TikTok clearly has enormous power, but

44:28

like I say, that's grown, it's like a

44:30

thing that's grown itself. I don't feel

44:32

like he's at the wheel.

44:35

Do you know what I mean? It feels

44:37

like it's got a life of its own.

44:39

So personally, I would say TikTok as power,

44:41

you've got to give it an eight. Yeah.

44:43

Right? Yeah. Zhang himself, I'd give him a

44:45

two, you know, take your pick. Split it

44:47

down the middle and he's kind of

44:49

a five out of 10. Yeah, I would agree

44:51

with that. Okay. I mean, come on. If one

44:53

of your hobbies is going online and daydreaming, you're

44:56

not going to score very highly on power. You

44:58

just don't have the, you just don't seem

45:00

to kind of have the motivation to

45:02

exercise it. Okay. So five each on

45:04

power legacy. Um, I

45:07

mean, you're never going to get rid of TikTok or apps

45:09

like it, are you? No. And I

45:11

think really what TikTok has done is

45:13

shown the kind of

45:15

importance of short form

45:18

social video apps. I don't think we're ever

45:20

going to get rid of social video because

45:22

of platforms like TikTok. It

45:24

feels like the Warholian prophecy that

45:28

in the future, everyone will be

45:30

famous for 15 minutes seems wildly

45:33

insufficient for what's happened.

45:36

It's almost like you want to dig Andy Warhol

45:38

out of his grave and say, come on

45:40

with a theory. Yeah. Check this out. Um,

45:44

the point is, is someone hadn't done TikTok,

45:46

somebody else would have done, they happened on

45:48

this short form video kind of stuff, which,

45:52

you know, ultimately anyone could do. There's nothing

45:54

stopping other platforms doing that kind of short

45:56

form video stuff. But I do think

45:58

that there's something about TikTok I

46:00

reckon it's to do with the algorithm,

46:03

which is uniquely good at doing that.

46:05

And I think we have to

46:07

give Dan some credit for being the person

46:09

to invest so heavily in the algorithm, getting

46:11

all those engineers to work on it, realising

46:13

that that was the thing that made the

46:15

platform so special. Yeah, I think the

46:17

legacy might be making

46:20

us realise what we are actually like. Oh,

46:23

which a shutter just ran down

46:26

my spine of that. Do you know what I mean?

46:28

I think that it's kind of said, this

46:30

is who we are. This is what gets

46:32

us going. This is what titillates, amuses,

46:36

captivates us. So

46:38

for legacy, I mean, I would score him quite

46:40

highly on this, I think. Okay, fine.

46:43

I'm going to go seven for legacy. I'm

46:46

going to give Dan an eight. Wow,

46:48

okay. Because I do think that when

46:50

we look back at the social media

46:52

wars, Kick-Tock is already and

46:55

will become one of the huge players in that

46:57

field. So is he good, bad or just

46:59

another billionaire? For me, it comes down

47:01

to he's either bad or just another billionaire.

47:03

I mean, I would

47:05

say if he was more than Mark Zuckerberg figure,

47:07

you know, iron grip on the thing that he's

47:10

created, appearing in Congress

47:12

to defend it, you know, those kind

47:14

of billionaire traits, he would

47:16

nudge himself into bad billionaire territory. But

47:18

I kind of wonder, I don't know,

47:20

the fact that he stepped away from

47:22

it, the fact that he talks about,

47:24

you know, his hobbies,

47:27

being a terrible leader, his hobbies, being

47:30

daydreaming and listening to music. He

47:33

just seems a bit of an idiosyncratic figure who, like

47:36

a Dr. Frankenstein who created a monster.

47:39

Yeah, whatever you think about Tick-Tock, he seems

47:41

to be a very inoffensive person. So I'm

47:43

going to say he is

47:45

just another billionaire. Oh,

47:48

it's difficult for me. I

47:50

actually would say he is just another billionaire

47:52

as a person. But

47:54

the product he created, I don't

47:56

know, watch the space, you know, Tick-Tock might very

47:58

well bring down to mock. Wow,

48:01

what a way to end. So

48:04

who do we have on the next episode? We

48:06

have the man who is leading a

48:09

technology which will one day kill us

48:11

all, cure us all, I

48:13

mean we can't believe anything we read, see or

48:15

hear, AI Wrangler

48:17

in Chief, Sam Altman of

48:20

OpenAI. You may have

48:22

heard of OpenAI because it's made chat QPT,

48:25

and we'll also be asking their number one

48:28

product, exactly what it thinks of its founder

48:30

Sam Altman. Good

48:32

Bad Billionaire is a podcast from the BBC

48:34

World Service. It's produced by Hannah Hufford and

48:36

Mark Ward with additional production by Tamsin Curry.

48:38

James Cook is the editor. For

48:41

the BBC World Service, the senior podcast producer

48:43

is Kat Collins and the podcast commissioning editor

48:45

is John Manel. We'd like to

48:47

thank Matthew Brennan who wrote the book

48:50

Attention Factory, The Story of TikTok and

48:52

China's ByteDance, which is very helpful. in

48:55

translating some of the original Chinese reporting. So

48:59

let me search, let me pull up my TikTok app

49:01

and search Good Bad Billionaire. Now

49:05

it's thinking about it. And we're

49:07

on it. Yeah, we're on the BBC Sounds... Love this app.

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