earth and the roll shop even

  

China’s Toutiao is buying Musical.ly in a deal worth $800M-$1B

by sources tell TechCrunch that Bytedance, the company behind China’s top news aggregator service Toutiao, will pay between $800 million and $1 billion to buy Musical.ly, which claims 60 million users most of whom are based in the U.S..

Three-year-old Musical.ly was previously valued at $500 million when it raised its most recent round of funding in 2016. The startup said it will continue to run as an independent business within Bytedance, taking advantage of the distribution and tech that its new parent offers.

Bytedance itself has been on a tear over the past two years thanks primarily to Toutiao, which claims 120 million monthly users. The firm is reported to be raising as much as $2 billion in new funding at a valuation of $20 billion, and it has expanded into other types of mobile content through acquisitions such as video app Flipagram.

Toutiao has become well known for its extensive use of artificial intelligence to help build a tailored newsfeed for its userbase, and in an announcement today the companies said that this tech will be used to develop Musical.ly’s reach in terms of users and creators in China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. These are regions where the company hasn’t really made a mark to date, despite the fact that its founders are Chinese and its head office is in Shanghai, but Bytedance has a growing presence in them.

In that sense, there’s plenty of synergy to the deal — which gives insight into how keen Bytedance is to expand overseas having already found huge success in the Chinese market.

At a time when investors have cooled on social media, Musical.ly stands out as a success story. There’s a commonly held view that it’s almost impossible to stand out amongst a crowded market which includes Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter. In that way, Bytedance is similar since it has emerged to become a super company in China, where Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have traditionally dominated as the big three.

In Musical.ly’s case, it latched onto the tween demographic and quickly developed cult fanfare. From music videos to live streaming, the platform developed a full-fledged social network, with some users becoming stars.

In the business community, Musical.ly’s success was initially under the radar. When we broke the story of its funding round 18 months ago, the startup name hardly rang a bell for most adults in Silicon Valley. The Shanghai-based company had both local and Silicon Valley investors. Greylock Partners, GGV Capital, DCM and Qiming all saw Musical.ly’s promise.

Despite that promise, there is controversy. Musical.ly has defended the way that it works with its young userbase — with many not even in their teens — after concerns about how it handles data and permissions.

  

This story is another story......

The cat is in the fable the strongest creature, because he has nine lives. Butterfly is the most beautiful creature in the world, but her beauty is fleeting.

The two kind of life without any communication met and fell in love, and, like the cat butterflies flying around him, and like a cat chasing her beating butterfly.

Every day they always like to meet in the village of the tree to meet and play, this day butterfly early, not a fairy in the tree the edge of the lake, then arrived at the cat, seen in the lake the butterfly struggled without hesitation, and jumped into the lake, but the cat that can swim, they are both the lake submerged.

But the cat have nine lives but butterfly has only one life, although the cat lost a life can only holding the butterfly's body, cry, a cry is three days, so the cat in the past was not nocturnal, only because crying is the eyes, can see clearly at night.

And a lot of people say the cat's eye stone is the most beautiful gem, it is because he is like the eyes of a cat, and the cat's eyes are beautiful because he feels forever shining tears.

Look at the butterfly disappeared in the world, love the butterfly cat did not resign, so the cat out the devil, the devil is an evil exists, it can meet the needs of any person, any desire. But the same is, a person must pay the corresponding cost, or beyond the desire of something of value in exchange.

But the cat except life what are not, so the cat with a life of its own, just with a simple desire, butterfly next life who is.

The cat demon desire, know the Butterfly Chapter II will be a human girl.

So the cat to the butterfly the birth place to wait for her, the cat looked at a lady belly grew larger, know the previous school butterfly was born.

But the little butterfly was not lucky, because she was born with invisible. After more than a month, the butterfly's parents also found this problem, so ruthless abandon him butterfly in the forest, while the cat wanted to help the butterfly, but the body is too heavy, not a cat can move, he can only quietly watching the little butterfly, do not let her be wild beasts.

That night, a wolf, like to eat the little girl. Cat balloon jackal, wolf although moved, but it doesn't eat will starve to death. The cat know want to sacrifice oneself for they don't have, so he told the wolf, I let you eat, but you miss her. The wolf agreed, the cat with a body, is also a life, protect the little girl.

This cat has only six lives, the cat in the girl's side a is three days. Give her water to send food every day, but it is too far from the city, don't see anyone.

No way, the cat can only once again summoned demon, in exchange for a life, want a person to find the girl and to adopt her. The devil promised cat, so that the old man in the mountains found the little girl, and adopted a little girl.