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Why Chinese Apps Are the Favorites of Young Americans
#1
Somebody mentioned Temu the other day. It's the number one downloaded app in the US...

Seven-month-old Temu was the most downloaded app across U.S. app stores during the first three weeks of March, according to market-insights firm Sensor Tower. It was followed by TikTok’s video-editing partner app CapCut and TikTok itself. Fast-fashion retailer Shein came in fourth. Then came Facebook, the only non-Chinese app among the only non-Chinese app among the top five.

The apps came out of companies founded by a younger generation of tech entrepreneurs who are looking for global growth as China’s firewalled market becomes saturated. They are backed by China’s vast pool of tech talent: While Temu is a shopping site, more than half its workforce are engineers focused on getting people to swipe and buy.

Chinese internet companies’ organizational efficiency is overlooked by their American competitors, say investors, engineers and analysts. The Chinese firms spend lavishly to push their apps in the U.S. They leverage China’s one billion internet users to test user preferences and optimize their AI models at home, then export the tech overseas.

“They are totally killing it in markets where they need to constantly reiterate products to meet user demands,” said Guo Yu, a former senior principal engineer at TikTok’s parent ByteDance Ltd. who worked at the company between 2014 and 2020.


It's an interesting read and this only a small part of it from the Wall Street Journal and I did not hit a paywall.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-chinese...malertNEWS
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#2
1) Someone told me (to my surprise) Temu is based in New Jersey and its stock is on some US exchange. I assumed it was Chinese and wouldn't be at all surprised if it was, but...

2) A little tangential, and I don't want to boot this to the other side, but as a disinterested observer (I don't do TikTok), I don't get what the fuss is all about. Apparently the Chinese Communist Party might make TikTok turn over information on us - like, whether our teens prefer dance TikTok videos or cat TikTok videos?

Glad that kind of thing doesn't happen with Google...or Amazon.

:RollingEyesSmiley5:
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#3
pdq wrote:
1) Someone told me (to my surprise) Temu is based in New Jersey and its stock is on some US exchange. I assumed it was Chinese and wouldn't be at all surprised if it was, but...

2) A little tangential, and I don't want to boot this to the other side, but as a disinterested observer (I don't do TikTok), I don't get what the fuss is all about. Apparently the Chinese Communist Party might make TikTok turn over information on us - like, whether our teens prefer dance TikTok videos or cat TikTok videos?

Glad that kind of thing doesn't happen with Google...or Amazon.

:RollingEyesSmiley5:

If Google, Apple or Amazon are tracking your habits and targeting ads to sell you shit, then it's a bit different than the police asking for information on where you were last night. With the Chinese apps, they can just get that info, other countries typically have safeguards - like court systems - in place to prevent spurious government intrusions. Will the Chinese government be looking at your dance habits? Probably not, but they might be interested in your other habits if you happen to be an employee of a sensitive organization, government, soldier on a military base, etc.
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#4
pdq wrote:
1) Someone told me (to my surprise) Temu is based in New Jersey and its stock is on some US exchange. I assumed it was Chinese and wouldn't be at all surprised if it was, but...

Temu may be based in NJ, but it is a subsidiary of the China based PDD Holdings, which trades on NASDAQ under the symbol PDD. The top level corporate officers are all Chinese.
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#5
Maybe it's because Chinese app makers have an even lower class of ethics than US social media companies and make them even more addictive.
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