ByteDance’s triumphant TikTok/ Douyin is one of the most successful Chinese brands that have made its name beyond borders. The short video brand enjoyed immense popularity around the world, surpassing Instagram and WhatsApp to be the most downloaded mobile app. In 2025, the brand value of TikTok/Douyin amounted to *** billion U.S. dollars. It was the second most valuable unicorn worldwide as of 2024 with a market cap of *** billion U.S. dollars. TikTok versus Douyin: the major differences After Douyin’s success in China, ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017— a separate, international version of Douyin. The video-sharing platforms, though quite similar in interface and functions, are two independent entities. Douyin and TikTok differ in accessibility (mainland China versus rest of the world), content results (China-based content versus international content), positioning (skills and lifestyle-tips-based versus more art-based), and functions (Douyin has more advanced live streaming and in-app purchase features). Who is using TikTok and Douyin? The duo possessed a large user base. In 2025, TikTok was estimated to have over *** million users while that of Douyin would exceed *** million in China. American and Southeast Asian countries were TikTok’s major markets. On average, the international version had a relatively older user composition than its Chinese sister app – a ***** of users aged below 34 years registered on TikTok versus **** of Douyin users were under 31 years. In some countries like the United States, TikTok has achieved a high penetration rate among young adults.

The impressive growth of social media companies in the early 2010s made many founders extremely wealthy. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the world’s richest social media entrepreneur with a personal net worth of *** billion U.S. dollars. Zhang Yiming, the creator of TikTok, is worth **** billion U.S. dollars. Social media companies going public and being acquired The years between 2010 and 2019 saw a flurry of social media companies filing for an initial public offering (IPO) or being acquired by bigger, public companies, generating significant amounts of wealth for their founders and early employees in the process. Facebook, which went public in May 2012, had the biggest IPO in tech and internet history until online shopping giant Alibaba went public in 2014. Many of the richest social media entrepreneurs are connected to Facebook and most of their net worth is derived from their early investment and subsequent ownership stake in the social network. Many early Facebook investors and co-founders have used their earnings from the company to increase their wealth derived from tech. Some, such as Dustin Moskovitz, have gone on to found other companies, whereas others, like Eduardo Saverin, have become venture capitalists. The social media era Other social media company IPOs which created major online buzz include Twitter’s in 2013, Snap’s initial public offering four years later and more recently, Pinterest’s, which made headlines in early 2019. TikTok's founder Zhang Yiming saw an unprecedented success in 2020 and ranked second on the social media billionaires' list. The coronavirus social restrictions and lockdowns led to people resorting to TikTok as a means of entertainment and socializing. Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger netted a huge payday in 2012 when Facebook bought their then up-and-coming social network Instagram for * billion U.S. dollars – a sum which at that time was unheard of for such a transaction. However, this is nothing compared to the payout enjoyed by Jan Koum and Brian Acton two years later, whose chat service WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for a staggering ** billion U.S. dollars – although the Facebook-Instagram deal arguably made bigger waves across the industry. In hindsight, Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram has come to represent a turning point in tech venture capitalism, helping to define the concept of tech “unicorns” and positioning an acquisition-enabled exit as a viable and lucrative target for start-ups.

The net advertising revenue of TikTok in the United States was projected to amount to **** billion U.S. dollars in 2022, marking a ***** percent increase from the previous year's value of *** billion. Revenue was expected to further increase over the following years, reaching an estimated ***** billion in 2024.

In 2021, TikTok generated **** billion U.S. dollars in advertising revenue worldwide. For 2022, the Chinese social media platform is projected to more than triple this result, with **** billion U.S. dollars. In 2024, TikTok is projected to reach close to **** billion in ad revenue on a global scale.

As of August 31, 2025, ByteDance's flagship product TikTok had generated more than ***** billion U.S. dollars in global app revenue since its release in 2014. The Chinese company owns *** apps which operate in ** countries across the world. Other prominent non-game apps from ByteDance include video editor tool ******, photo editing service *****, video sharing site *************, and China's most popular news and information platform *******.

As of January 2025, Zhang Yiming topped the list of the richest people in China with a net worth of 60 billion U.S. dollars. Zhong Shanshan, founder of the beverage company Nongfu Spring, and Ma Huateng, founder of the IT giant Tencent, came in second and third respectively, while Ma Yun, founder of the IT giant Alibaba, fell back to the tenth place. Ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in China Net worth refers to the amount of value by which an individual’s assets exceed their liabilities. It is usually cited to demonstrate the economic position of a person. Following China’s extensive economic development over the past two decades, the number of wealthy people had been rapidly growing as well. According to Hurun Research Institute, Greater China was the region with the second largest number of billionaires worldwide as of 2025, with a total number of 870 billionaires. As of February 2025, the number of millionaires had amounted to approximately 19,000 people in Beijing alone. Unsurprisingly, the majority of high-net worth individuals lives in one of the four first-tier cities Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Chinese billionaire's sources of wealth Chinese millionaires have accumulated their wealth primarily as private entrepreneurs. Most of the people listed among the 20 wealthiest Chinese in 2024 had owned their own companies. Zhang Yiming, who topped the list of richest people in China in 2025, has made his fortune as founder of BytaDance and Douyin, the social media platform internationally known as TikTok.

Global net sales of beauty brand Sol de Janeiro grew by 157 percent on-year, amounting to some 686 million euros in the financial year ended March 31, 2024. The company, which focuses on beauty products inspired by Brazilian beach culture, has seen astoundingly high growth across the time period recorded. It was acquired by L'Occitane en Provence in November 2021 and initially recorded net sales of just 26.1 million euros in 2022. The perfect example of a viral product Brazil-inspired brand Sol de Janeiro launched its Brazilian Bum Bum body cream in 2016, and since then, the company’s portfolio expanded to other product categories, including hair care and fragrance. In recent years, its products have gone viral on social media, especially TikTok, causing a notable growth in the brand’s sales. Among its most loved products are body and hair sprays, for example, the Cheirosa ’62 hair and body fragrance mist, which became one of the highest-grossing fragrances on Amazon.com in the United States as of April 2023. In the same year, Sol de Janeiro was also featured in a ranking of the leading fragrance brands among female Gen Z shoppers in the United States. L’Occitane en Provence The Sol de Janeiro brand belongs to France-based company L’Occitane en Provence or simply, L’Occitane, one of the most popular names in the prestige personal care industry. In 2023, L’Occitane recorded sales amounting to over two billion euros. This was the highest result registered in comparison to previous fiscal years. Moreover, most of these sales were generated in the APAC and Americas regions, which were also the regions counting the highest number of L’Occitane stores that year, with 635 stores in the APAC region and 364 recorded in the Americas.