A S’porean Will be The New CEO of TikTok; Was Previously from Xiaomi

By
Aveyn Toh
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If you’re 37 years old or older right now, you’ll definitely never hear the end of this from your parents, especially if they are the typical Asian sort who just love to compare you to whoever is more successful.

A S’porean Will be The New CEO of TikTok; Was Previously from Xiaomi

Mr Shou Zi Chew was recently announced as the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the massively-popular short-video app, TikTok.

This is especially a surprise considering that Mr Chew only joined the ByteDance family in March of this year after working as the chief financial officer (CFO) of Xiaomi for over 5 years.

Similar to Mr Kevin Mayer, his predecessor, Mr Chew will be holding both positions – CEO at TikTok and CFO at ByteDance.

Note that Mr Mayer held the positions of CEO at TikTok and chief operating officer (COO) at ByteDance prior to resigning last year.

Another prominent announcement that came in tandem involves Ms Vanessa Pappas, who had served as interim head over at TikTok.

She was named as the new COO.

Who is this new CEO of TikTok?

Unless you’re well-versed in the world of high-ranked executives, you probably have not heard of Mr Chew’s name before.

In that case, allow us to give you a little more insight into this exceptional S’porean!

Graduated from Harvard Business School with his M.B.A. in 2010, Mr Shou Zi Chew has had plenty of experience working in investment firms with the likes of Goldman Sachs and DST Global. In fact, while working at DST Global, he was involved in the firm’s investments in rising Chinese companies like Xiaomi, JD.com, Alibaba and Didi Dache.

He was headhunted to join Xiaomi as its CFO in 2016, and eventually rose to become the international business president of the company… in addition to his duties as CFO, of course.

The tension between China and the US is his #1 priority

As you may know, the relationship between China and US has always been tenuous at best but this tension was greatly aggravated when the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out.

And of course, there’s also the increasing concerns of data privacy, especially of the minors who use the highly-popular TikTok app… or any Chinese-made app really, as far as US is concerned.

In the age of big data, TikTok is truly the king, outperforming even the algorithms that Facebook or Snapchat used to predict what users like to see next and keep the users engaged for as long as possible while the users are using their apps.

However, in order for its powerful algorithm to work, it requires massive amounts of data points which it collects from its users, including what websites people like to browse and even how they type.

It is this massive bundle of data that the US feared that the Communist Party of China or the CCP would be able to obtain via ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, through various means and what they could potentially do with it that may harm “national security”.

In fact, back in 2019, ByteDance was fined a hefty US$5.7million (approximately S$7.6 million) by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a settlement over Musical.ly.

Acquired by ByteDance and then folded into TikTok, it seems like the app had illegally collected information from minors and hence, was penalized by the FTC.

Another similar lawsuit was just filed on behalf of kids in the UK and Europe over privacy concerns as well just this month.

These are only some of the major issues that Mr Chew will have to tackle on his plate.

Featured Image: Facebook (Primaonline Prima-Comunicazione)

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Aveyn Toh
Email: [email protected]