The discussion explores the story behind TikTok, a global sensation reaching over a billion active users worldwide. Shoshu, the CEO of TikTok, elaborates on the platform's mission to inspire creativity and joy, and how TikTok differs from traditional social media by recommending content based on user interest rather than follower count. TikTok's use of machine learning and AI for its recommendation algorithm, coupled with the creative freedom it provides through video content, are key factors behind its transformation into a cultural phenomenon.

Shoshu addresses the potential positive impact of TikTok, presenting it as a platform extending beyond entertainment to include community, education, and culture. He shares examples from Saudi Arabia that reflect TikTok’s role in promoting local culture and knowledge. The CEO also highlights TikTok's initiatives, such as the STEM Feed to educate users, positioning TikTok as a force for good that fosters inspiration and creativity.

Main takeaways from the discussion:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. inception [ɪnˈsɛpʃən] - (noun) - The starting point of something, or the establishment of an entity or idea. - Synonyms: (beginning, commencement, initiation)

He has been part of the TikTok family since inception.

2. phenomenon [fəˈnɒmɪnən] - (noun) - A remarkable and observable occurrence or event, often seen as extraordinary. - Synonyms: (event, occurrence, happening)

To turn almost what was a small app to what is becoming now almost a cultural phenomenon?

3. algorithm [ˈælgəˌrɪðəm] - (noun) - A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or problem-solving operations. - Synonyms: (procedure, formula, method)

AI enabled the recommendation algorithm to be as useful and as interesting as it is today.

4. symbiotic [ˌsɪmbaɪˈɒtɪk] - (adjective) - Characterized by a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups. - Synonyms: (mutualistic, cooperative, reciprocal)

I see us living in a very sort of symbiotic, you know, relationship rather than one of replacement.

5. virulent [ˈvɪrjʊlənt] - (adjective) - Extremely severe or harmful in its effects, often referring to something aggressive or destructive. - Synonyms: (malignant, infective, toxic)

But if you look at just two angles, if you look at the top 10 videos of TikTok, every single year, we published them, we're going to publish them again very soon. They're all joyful, every single one of them.

6. innovative [ˈɪnəˌveɪtɪv] - (adjective) - Featuring new methods; advanced and original in terms of creativity. - Synonyms: (original, inventive, cutting-edge)

And we made video the main format for the app itself. And that's another innovation that we brought to the table.

7. joyful [ˈdʒɔɪfəl] - (adjective) - Feeling, expressing, or demonstrating happiness or pleasure. - Synonyms: (cheerful, elated, happy)

It's a very joyful experience.

8. provocative [prəˈvɑːkətɪv] - (adjective) - Causing annoyance, anger, or another strong reaction, especially deliberately. - Synonyms: (inflammatory, emotive, inciting)

You know, you name it provocative, you name it.

9. guidelines [ˈɡaɪdlaɪnz] - (noun) - A general rule, principle, or piece of advice that directs actions or decisions. - Synonyms: (directions, instructions, protocols)

We have a set of rules that we call our community guidelines.

10. eloquent [ˈɛləkwənt] - (adjective) - Fluent or persuasive in speaking or writing, clearly expressing or indicating something. - Synonyms: (articulate, expressive, well-spoken)

So let's continue the pitch.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew and FII Institute CEO Richard Attias at #FII8

This is why I asked my team that this conversation I want to moderate because Shoshu is one of my heroes, even if my family is making a lot of fun of me for years and years, because I was one of the first user of TikTok. Thank you. And despite many people challenging me about why, before going to bed, I spent almost. So I'm sharing some secrets with you guys half an hour every day on TikTok. I find that it's an amazing platform, what you have created, despite all the critics and the challenges you are going through, but it's not the purpose today. But I want to share with you. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, almost everyone is looking at TikTok. I can tell you if they say no, they are lying because I know that many people are forwarding me a lot of TikTok stuff. So yes or no, guys, be honest. You see.

So Shaw is the chief executive officer of TikTok and of course he is leading the overall business and bringing the company's vision to life. So just for you to understand, who is Sho? He has been part of the TikTok family since inception. He was born and raised in Singapore and he attended university in London. So he holds an undergrad degree from University College London UCL and an MBA from Harvard Business School. So he's a smart guy. And this is why one day he probably had this great idea of having this original spark that ignite the idea for TikTok. So what was exactly this original spark show? Yeah, it's. Richard, I think it's. We have to start from the mission of the business and it's important because ultimately, you know, we have thousands of employees and every day they're building towards something. The mission that we have is inspire creativity and bring joy.

So that's sort of, you know, and I'll come back to this in a second because if you use TikTok, it sounds like you do every night for 30 minutes. You know, you could spend more time if you want. What you will find is a very creative experience. It's a very joyful experience. In terms of the original spark, the idea was to present content to users not based on who you followed, because back in 2012, 2013, the social network was all in the rage. And it's all about building your social graph, meaning getting people to follow you, building out that Graph. And the content that you will see is going to be based on people that you follow. And I think that's the model that many of our peers in the market still follow today.

But we have brought something very new to the table. You know, we recommend content to you not based on how many people follow you, but based on interest signals, meaning if you have a good message, if you have a funny video, if you are a small hippo in Thailand, which has gone completely viral called Moo Dang, if you haven't seen it, just search it. If you have a good message, you don't need any followers to begin with to become viral, to make sure that your message is heard by as many people around the world as possible. And I think that's the difference. You know, that's the key difference that we bring to the table.

But what was the main decision you made? To turn almost what was a small app to what is becoming now almost a cultural phenomenon? There are a couple of things that, you know, as in the last 10 years, first of all, machine learning and AI enabled the recommendation algorithm to be as useful and as interesting as it is today. It's very accurate. If you think about it. There's no human curation really, that goes into the recommendation process. It is really about, you know, using machine learning and then matching your signal interest with potential signal interest that you could have. And that's really sort of the magic of the algorithm.

Now, beyond that, in the last 10 years, everybody has a smartphone now, and smartphones have cameras. So we decided that the app was not only going to be based on text, it's not only going to be based on pictures, but we opened up video and we made video the main format for the app itself. And that's another innovation that we brought to the table. And the third is, of course, this idea that everybody should have the chance to publish. So it shouldn't just be in the hands of a small group of people. We allow essentially anyone with a camera, anyone with creativity, to be able to create something very quickly using all the tools that we give them and be able to share their message with the world. So that's really the difference that we brought.

I know you are under huge pressure and some critics. So let's make a pitch to our friends and to the millions of people who are watching us, how TikTok could be a force for good. Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people still have this understanding, especially people who don't use the app that much. They think that the app is, you know, for young people is dancing, is singing. Well, that's all true, you know, there's still a lot of dancing and singing. But it's more than that now because we have more than a billion users around the world today, in many countries as of today.

Do you know, we don't disclose the specifics, but it's definitely significantly larger than a billion active users around the world. And if you think about, you know, the content that we have even in this country, you know, I was looking at the feed. Whenever I travel, I look at the feed and it's my third time in. In the kingdom. In the kingdom, in just this year, there is somebody called Abdullah El Alawi, for example. Abdullah El Alawi. El Alawi, okay. He's a local creator, he talks, he shares a lot of content about local culture. For example, I learned that the.

I'm going to say this wrong. The Schwab. Yeah. He talked about the history of the shop, the fishing net and the years of the wheat, and how, you know, that original practical use is married into the culture today in the local context. It's amazing. I mean, I did not know about this. I think there is a female footballer called Farah. She plays for Etihad, I believe she's on the platform and she's encouraging young women to learn about the sport, to pick up the sport. So it's no longer just about entertainment, the light dancing and singing, which is still important. It is now about community, it is about education, it's about heritage, it's about culture, is about the arts. And I think that's a significant positive change to the world.

So let's continue the pitch. How TikTok could make us more creative and not just be distracted and become addicted to an app, which is, forgive me to be a bit provocative, useless, you know. So how can it help us to be more creative? No, because I will be very honest, I find great ideas. You know, as a creator of also platforms, I took two, three ideas from what I found on TikTok. So if I'm asking the question, because I am convinced of the answer, but I would like you to continue this speech on how can we be more creative or how can you help us to be more creative?

We provide tools. Well, first of all, to inspire creativity is the mission itself. We talked about the mission at the start. Inspire creativity, bring joy. So creativity and joy. And joy is important. We'll talk about joy. This is your DNA. The DNA is creativity and joy. Exactly. It's built in the mission statement of the company. So what we Provide is if you open the app, you click the plus sign at the bottom, you go to effects. You're going to see thousands and thousands of effects that we bring to the table to help spark people's creativity. You know, it's a tool that enables them to express themselves better in terms of, you know, in terms of the content pool itself.

What we are seeing is that things like Book Talk. Book Talk is a very organic movement on the platform where people talk about books that they like. It has tens of billions of views around the world today. There is something very interesting that we launched in the US About a year ago called the STEM Feed. So this is a, you know, if you go to settings, content preferences, turn on stamp feed, you will see a feed where it's only science and math content. And we are going to launch this in the Kingdom as well, in conjunction with the Science and Technology University here as well. So we believe that this should be a platform that's not only about creativity and fun, but you could learn something as well. And we're going to take all the STEM and math content that we can find and we're going to put it in this dedicated and specialized feed for users in this country.

So what do you think is. We spoke about the DNA, but what do you think is your responsibility or the responsibility of TikTok vis a vis humanity? Let's be ambitious. You know, we tried the FIS Institute to have an impact on humanity. We spoke a lot here during the past few hours about how to invest for good, how to invest for purpose. So I think as a founder, you wake up in the morning and I think you should ask yourself, what is my legacy, What I'm doing good for humanity. So what is the responsibility of tiftoc? We think that the legacy is going to be defined by the mission. The mission, creativity and joy. And it is important.

We talked a lot about the creative components. We can translate this into economic activity. So today, in just the Kingdom, we have 125,000 businesses that use our platform. And because we talked about this earlier as well, you do not need to be famous. You don't need to have followers. If you have a good message, you're going to get an audience on TikTok. And that's the difference that we bring. So businesses with good products and a good message can find it very easy to get access to a large audience on our platform, which is why they embrace it so much. Most of them don't pay us, by the way. They just post content on our platform.

It's Interesting content, they get the audience that they want. So on an economic front, I think we are contributing to the local economies that we are in as well. And in terms of joy, you know, there's one other thing that people don't talk about, but we are very proud of it, which is for a very long time, people assume that the only way you get viral is to say something controversial, outrageous, angry, toxic. You know, you name it provocative, you name it. But if you look at just two angles, if you look at the top 10 videos of TikTok, every single year, we published them, we're going to publish them again very soon. They're all joyful, every single one of them.

Last year, there was a cat that looked like a dog. There was a dog that sounded like a cat. You know, it's really very joyful types of content. And the number one creator on our platform, his name is Kabi, Kabi is a comedian. You know, he is famous for just being entertaining. You know, he's very creative. You know, the way he's entertaining. I'm not sure if you have seen his videos. He does his face. Yeah. Kavi was unknown before TikTok, so unlike many other platforms, you know, he wasn't famous before. He wasn't like a famous politician, he wasn't a famous soccer player, he wasn't a famous celebrity.

He was a factory worker in Italy. He had talent and he became the number one creator with 160 million followers on our platform. I think the joyful and the creative and the discovery element of this will define the legacy of our company. Let's Talk now about TikTok's role in journalism, if any role exists. You know, I'm a strong believer on the traditional media and we are doing whatever we can here to support the traditional media. This is why next door you have our media square, where we have all the traditional media and a lot of respect for them because they have the power to share the knowledge, to share information, to give access to knowledge to many people.

But with news and information moving to social media, do you think that traditional news source like tv, print become obsolete? I don't think so. I have a lot of respect for what you call traditional media. I think there's a lot of value in editorial standards, in robust journalism. And I think this is an industry that we want to. We want to help them, you know, we want to help them reach a bigger audience as well. So our platform is open to, you know, many news media outlets and many publishers, and a lot of them embrace our platform.

And they have found much larger audiences that they could have in a more traditional sense, you know, just print and digital on TikTok, you know, some of them have tens of millions of followers and they're able to get to bring their robust news to an even greater audience. And it's something we have been working closely with the industry to power in the Kingdom. We're working with SRMG Academy, for example, to help, you know, onboard more journalists, especially tech journalists, to better understand how to use TikTok to get a bigger audience. So I see us living in a very sort of symbiotic, you know, relationship rather than one of replacement.

You know, at the FI Institute, we publish every year the Priority, the FI Priority Compass, which is a big survey asking to many people in the world, thousands and thousands of people, what is your first priority? To make a long story Short, this year, 2024, for the third consecutive year, priority number one, cost of living. Priority number two, something new, governance. And number three, healthcare. Back to governance, we were asking more questions and just to share with our friends and members and these results are on our app now.

We report this morning, 75% of the people in the world consider that the world is not going in the right direction. And 66% consider that their own country is not going in the right direction. Except, and trust me, totally objective, it is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, by the way. But the big majority consider that the country is not going in the right direction. Do you think that TikTok is eroding public trust also in government and institutions? Because they always pick this information through social media. You know, social media are very influential, as you know, and this is how the public opinion is building its own opinion. So do you think TikTok is eroding this trust or highlighting this trust?

I think we bring a voice to many people. I think we bring creativity, we bring joy. We're also aligned. That dangerous misinformation has no place on our platform. So the way we govern our governance. Yeah, this was my question. How do you control. We have a set of rules that we call our community guidelines. And these guidelines are available on our website. So if you go, it's there, it's about 30 pages long today. We change it and update it every now and again with refresh guidelines. In the guidelines, you will find things that we allow or disallow on the platform.

And there are various rules here. There's things that we absolutely do not allow, like dangerous misinformation, like violence. We take it off the platform and then there are other things that we do not allow for our younger users. So if you are below a certain age, our content is actually more restricted for you. We have a more restricted experience. We don't allow you to use a few other features on our platform like no direct messages by default if you're below 16, no live streaming if you're below 18. We put some restrictions on how much time you can spend on the platform if they're below 18.

And we give parents a lot of tools to control the experience of their teenagers on our app because, I mean, I have three children myself, I understand that parents need tools to be able to. On the one hand, you want your children to be part of the digital world because that's the world that we live in. On the other, I think we all need more tools to be able to have conversations, to build a healthy relationship between our children and their digital devices and apps that they use. So I think we are very aligned on many of these things. But generally speaking, the fact that this platform exists and it gives the normal person a voice, the small business, the soccer player, someone like Abdullah Elawi, a voice to share about their heritage, their culture, you know, their history and their perspective on the world, I think that's actually a net positive.

You know, we just have to make sure that our community guidelines are well enforced. Two short last questions. First one, which advice would you give to the young entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, in the region, if they want one day to create something equivalent to TikTok or, you know, how you start? You know, he varies in the DNA and entrepreneurship mindset. So how, which, what are the two advices that you will give to the young entrepreneurs? Yeah, my experience of talking to younger entrepreneurs is typically I learn more from them than I find that I can say.

Because times are changing and you know, a lot of times as companies get bigger, we spend too much of our times in the internal building and the mechanisms and, and sometimes, you know, meeting young entrepreneurs and you know, they're so close to their refreshing, they're so close to their product. It's so refreshing. If I maybe were to say one thing, it would be to continue to do that, get first hand information. Don't rely on, you know, your managers to write reports for you. Go speak to your users. You know, don't rely on reading reports on how AI works. Just go download the app and try it, you know, just try it yourself. Like, don't lose that because I think as businesses grow, we tend to lose that.

Sure. At the fii, as you know, we look forward and the closing session in a couple of days will be about the world in 2030, how do we see it? And even maybe 2050, which is literally tomorrow. So what do you think are the opportunities and the challenges for TikTok by 2030 and then by 2050, I think it's going to be around three, four things. You know, the first is trust. I think our industry is undergoing a period where, you know, our industry, as in, you know, social media brought me, is undergoing a period where people have questions, you know, is it, you know, how are you thinking about this? How are you thinking about that?

In the countries that we operate in, you know, we are very global platforms in the sense that our users are all around the world, but in every country that we operate, the experience is deeply local. So I think earning trust locally, earning trust just generally as an industry is going to be a big challenge for us, all of us. And trust earning is not about being able to market yourself very well, although that helps. Ultimately, it's going to be based on the things that you have done. Did you fundamentally go address people's concerns and AI? Yeah, that will be the technology part, which will be my third part, I think, embracing technology and making sure that, I mean, this is clearly moving at a very fast, fast speed, so we need to stay on top of it and understand the impact it's going to have on our business.

And that in itself is challenging. And then, of course, it is making sure that we continue to hear what our users want. You know, we build E commerce, the E commerce experience, because our users wanted it. They saw something they liked, they said, can I just click and transact? Why can't I do that? So it was in response to what they told us that we built that and it's important to continue to do that. That'll be the second thing.

And finally, it's just keeping the organization fresh. Young talent people coming in, bright ideas and good ideas, making sure that they can be heard and they don't get lost. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, Shoshu, the man behind TikTok. Thank you, thank you.

TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, CREATIVE CONTENT, SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT, COMMUNITY BUILDING, FII INSTITUTE