WIPR - Apr 16 - TikTok infringed the trademarks of a video editing company when it released an editing feature called "Stitch" which enables users to clip and integrate scenes from another user's video into their own. London-based Stitch Editing filed the complaint at the US District Court for the District of California on Apr 12 against the social media platform and its Chinese subsidiary, ByteDance. Stitch Editing provides editing services for commercials and music videos and owns a registered US trademark for 'Stitch Editing' and common law trademark rights for "Stitch" that cover its editing services.
127 posts categorized "TikTok"
TikTok Sued for Trademark Infringement Over Editing Tool
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TikTok Funds First Episodic Public Health Series 'VIRAL' From NowThis
TECH CRUNCH - Apr 16 - TikTok is funding publishers' content by financially backing the production of media publisher NowThis' new series, "VIRAL," which will feature interviews with public health experts and a live Q&A session focused on answering questions about the pandemic. The partnership represents TikTok's first-ever funding of an episodic series from a publisher, though TikTok has previously funded creator content. NowThis says it brought the concept for the show to TikTok earlier this year outside of the accelerator program, Creative Learning Fund. The "VIRAL" series itself is hosted by infectious disease clinical researcher Laurel Bristow, who spent the last year working on COVID treatments and research.
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TikTok to Roll Out 6 New Interactive Music Filters This April
BANDWAGON - Apr 13 - TikTok plans to launch 6 new interactive music filters that offer an array of effects from visualization to animation this April. The effects are 'Music Visualizer': track beats in real-time to animate a retro background, 'Music Machine': interactive filter that allows users to control the MIDI loops and BPM of a song in real-time, 'Delayed Beats': a freeze-frame that aligns transitions to music beats, 'Text Beats': an effect that allows users to add text that transitions in sync to a sound, 'Solid Beats': visualizer that sync to the beat of a song, and 'Mirror Beats': an effect that aligns transitions to the beat of a song.
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It's Never Been Easier to Start a Social Network. Succeeding Is Another Story
CNN BUSINESS - Apr 9 - Trump is reportedly planning to launch a social media platform. Last year TikTok hit the 100m user mark in the U.S. Clubhouse, Gab and Parler emerged. Early social networks like Facebook and Twitter enjoyed a distinct advantage: They were early movers. Today, advances in tech have made it trivial to establish a website and build social functionality: (Heroku on Amazon, or Microsoft Azure with code from Github). A barebones copycat of Facebook might cost $25k, but bandwidth and storage costs could quickly spiral out of control. If you ended up with tens of millions of engaged users, costs could be a $1m/mo. An even bigger challenge is figuring out what product to offer and USPs. A lot of the first invites to Clubhouse, similar to LinkedIn, went to VCs and founders. Everyone wants to join the network where the investors are. Then there's still the question of profitability.
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TikTok Partners With Japan's Toho to Launch Film Festival
YAHOO ENTERTAINMENT - Apr 9 - TikTok and Toho, Japan's biggest and grandest studio, are partnering to launch a film festival aimed at scouting new creative talent. The TikTok Toho Film Festival 2021 will start accepting entries worldwide on Apr 12, with a closing deadline of May 31. Adobe is supplying technical support, such as offering all entrants access to an Adobe Premiere Pro editing workshop. Finalists will have free use of Adobe Creative Cloud software. The Grand Prize winner will also earn JPY4.5M of production support from Toho for the creator's next film, in addition to a JPY300K cash prize. The audience award winner will get JPY200K.
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India's Crackdown on ByteDance Sends A Chill Among Foreign Firms
GLOBAL TIMES - Apr 8 - After illegally freezing the bank accounts of ByteDance, an Indian court reportedly asked the company to deposit $11M for alleged tax evasion. ByteDance denied the allegation in court, saying the freeze amounted to harassment and it does not owe any tax. From app ban to investment restrictions, a series of instances clearly showed that the Indian government's discriminatory moves against Chinese companies are driven by economic nationalism and geopolitical consideration of leaning toward the US' political maneuver to contain China. If ByteDance in turn becomes an indicator of India's deteriorating business environment, Chinese companies will choose to avoid the Indian market in the future. For companies from other countries, their confidence in the Indian market will also be largely damaged.
by Qian Feng
See full article at Global Times
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TikTok Adds Auto-captions for Deaf People
TECH CRUNCH - Apr 7 - TikTok launches a feature designed to make its app accessible to people who are hard of hearing or deaf. The company is today debuting auto-captions - a feature that, when enabled, will automatically transcribe the speech from a video so viewers can read what's being said in the video as an alternative to listening. Initially, auto-captions will support American English and Japanese, with additional languages coming in the months ahead. This feature can also help those who want to watch TikTok videos without sound.
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TikTok Will Pay South African Musicians for Every Play Under a Just-signed Deal
BUSINESS INSIDER - Apr 7 - TikTok has announced a multi-year licensing agreement that covers 58 territories across the African continent. The deal will see registered South African musicians receiving royalties every time their songs are used on the platform. The multi-year licensing agreement will see registered musicians receiving royalties via Capasso, which has ~7k members. Royalties are determined by one's market share, as determined by usage, in each period.
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ByteDance Is Going Public With a $250B Valuation
OPTO - Apr 2 - ByteDance is now valued at $250B, the technology company is technically more valuable than Coca-Cola and Netflix. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is now considering going public via an initial public offering (IPO). The company more than doubled its revenue to around $35B in 2020 and grew its operating profit to ~ $7B from less than $4B the previous year.
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Pakistan Court Lifts TikTok Ban After 3 Weeks
LA PRENSA LATINA - Apr 2 - Pakistan unblocked TikTok after an order by a court that had banned it in March for allegedly not filtering obscene content, following a similar 10-day ban in Oct. The Peshawar High Court lifted the ban on the application after instructing the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to prevent the publication of "immoral content," court spokesperson Gul Khan told EFE.
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TikTok's Algorithm Is Sending Users Down a Far-right Extremist Rabbit Hole
MASHABLE - Mar 30 - TikTok's user recommendation algorithm is pushing its users toward accounts with the kinds of far-right views that are supposedly prohibited on the platform. The report found that TikTok is still promoting content from QAnon, Patriot Party, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters accounts on the platform's "For You" page. Furthermore, after recommending this far-right content to a user, TikTok's algorithm "increasingly serves" that user with other far-right TikTok accounts to follow. This type of behavior from social media algorithms often sends users spiraling down a "rabbit hole" of increasingly further right, extremist content.
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ByteDance Hires Away Executive From Xiaomi to Be CFO
WALL STREET JOURNAL - Mar 25 - ByteDance Ltd. has poached an executive from smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp. to become its new CFO. Shou Zi Chew, who had served as Xiaomi's CFO from 2015 to 2020, said on Twitter he would leave the Beijing-based company for a new role at ByteDance. Chew most recently worked as president of Xiaomi's international business after his time as CFO, during which the company went public on the Hong Kong stock exchange.
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TikTok Launches Fact-Checker on Eve Israel's Election Day
YNET NEWS - Mar 23 - TikTok announced that it has launched a new fact-checker in Israel ahead of Election Day. The feature, dubbed "Know the Facts," will flag content with a special tab, warning users before sharing the video that the information cannot be factually verified. In addition, the company recruited a local team to join its global staff when it comes to political discourse in Israel to help monitor content and find fake news. Flagged videos will be looked over by a human team. Due to the length that this process can take, TikTok said that flagged content will not appear on the app's main "For You" page. Videos found to be false will be permanently taken down.
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Pakistan Bans TikTok Again Over 'Immoral and Objectionable' Videos
TECH CRUNCH - Mar 12 - Pakistan has banned TikTok again in the country after reviewing a complaint that said the popular video app hosted immoral and objectionable content. Pakistan Telecom Authority said it was complying with the order and had "issued directions to the service providers to immediately block access to the TikTok app." This isn’t the first time ByteDance's app has been banned by Pakistan. PTA had briefly banned TikTok in the country last year, saying at the time that the Chinese social app hadn't addressed concerns about the nature of some videos on its platform despite warnings spanning several months.
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TikTok Launches New Commenting Features to Prevent Bullying
TECH CRUNCH - Mar 11 - TikTok announced it's rolling out new commenting features. Creators will now be able to control which comments can be posted on their content, before those comments go live. Another new addition, aimed at users who are commenting, will pop up a box that prompts the user to reconsider posting a comment that may be inappropriate or unkind. TikTok says the goal with the new features is to maintain a supportive, positive environment where people can focus on being creative and finding community.
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