From TikTok to Trigonometry: Could ByteDance Corner the Market on Edtech?

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

From TikTok to Trigonometry: Could ByteDance Corner the Market on Edtech?
Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

The pandemic led to an explosion in startups trying to fix online learning. In 2019, funding in the space reached $5.4 billion. By 2021, that number more than tripled to $16.8 billion.

In Los Angeles, startups like Subject and Numerade believe that they can solve issues caused by online education. That said, no one company has been able to figure out a good way to get kids to pay attention to a screen long enough to learn anything. Despite edtech’s massive growth, there was still a steep decline from 2019 to 2022 in math and reading scores across America.


Still, analysts expect the edtech sector to grow as parents seek out personalized education plans for their children. And with the AI boom in full swing, an increasing number of edtech companies turning to the tech to help build their curriculums.

Enter ByteDance, the company behind the wildly successful video-sharing app TikTok.

According to Business Insider, the company is creating an edtech platform, GeniusJoy, that will use AI to build a STEM curriculum. Targeted towards kids ages 10-12, GeniusJoy will seek to improve students' math and STEM skills through courses, guides and quizzes. This comes at a time when American students are seeing record-low math scores. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 38% of eighth graders did not meet basic math requirements, and overall math scores fell by eight points between 2019 and 2022.

What might be less clear to some people is why, exactly, the tech company behind a video-sharing app is interested in edtech.

On the one hand, the move does fit with ByteDance’s quest for world domination. In China, the company has expanded into healthcare, virtual reality and news. It even tested the edtech waters with three different companies, but China’s restrictions on online learning made that endeavor a bust.

Still, it is undeniably a tough time for ByteDance to be expanding its American presence. Its flagship app, TikTok, is facing heavy scrutiny over its data collection. Schools and state governments have banned the app. Even outside of government mandates, people are concerned about ByteDance potentially sharing personal information with the Chinese government.

Which begs the question: would parents entrust their kid’s education to ByteDance? It’s unlikely considering a recent survey found that 52% of American parents don’t trust TikTok with their children’s data.

But here’s the thing: GeniusJoy boasts a tried and true curriculum based on "Singapore math pedagogy.” Crucially, The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study from 2019 found that students in Singapore scored higher in math than any other country, with American students ranking 17th.

More importantly, in 2022, young users spent 113 minutes per day on TikTok—higher than any other social media app. Teens also consistently rank TikTok as their favorite app, beating out competitors like YouTube and Netflix.

All of which is to say, if there’s one company that knows how to keep young people engaged, it’s ByteDance. With access to such a treasure trove of data, the information could, theoretically, be applied to figuring out how to keep young people engaged with a more tailored curriculum.

If the company succeeds, it will then be up to parents to decide which is more valuable, their children’s data or their test scores. And with the ever-increasing difficulty of getting into college, it might not be quite as tough a decision as it currently seems.

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“Millions of Dollars Completely Wasted”: Without Neuromarketing, Tech Firms’ Ads Get Lost in the Noise

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

“Millions of Dollars Completely Wasted”: Without Neuromarketing, Tech Firms’ Ads Get Lost in the Noise

At Super Bowl LVII, advertisers paid at least $7 million for 30–second ad spots, and even more if they didn’t have a favorable relationship with Fox. But the pricey commercials didn’t persuade everyone.

A recent report from advertising agency Kern and neuroscience marketing research outfit SalesBrain is attempting to answer that question using facial recognition and eye-tracking software.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

Behind Her Empire: ComplYant Founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson on Helping Small Businesses

Yasmin Nouri

Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.

Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.

Behind Her Empire: ComplYant Founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson on Helping Small Businesses

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Taylor Swift Concert in the Metaverse? Ticketing Platform Token Is Using NFTs To Optimize Experiences

Andria Moore

Andria is the Social and Engagement Editor for dot.LA. She previously covered internet trends and pop culture for BuzzFeed, and has written for Insider, The Washington Post and the Motion Picture Association. She obtained her bachelor's in journalism from Auburn University and an M.S. in digital audience strategy from Arizona State University. In her free time, Andria can be found roaming LA's incredible food scene or lounging at the beach.

Taylor Swift Concert in the Metaverse? Ticketing Platform Token Is Using NFTs To Optimize Experiences
Evan Xie

When Taylor Swift announced her ‘Eras’ tour back in November, all hell broke loose.

Hundreds of thousands of dedicated Swifties — many of whom were verified for the presale — were disappointed when Ticketmaster failed to secure them tickets, or even allow them to peruse ticketing options.

But the Taylor Swift fiasco is just one of the latest in a long line of complaints against the ticketing behemoth. Ticketmaster has dominated the event and concert space since its merger with Live Nation in 2010 with very few challengers — until now.

Adam Jones, founder and CEO of Token, a fan-first commerce platform for events, said he has the platform and the tech ready to take it on. First and foremost, with Token, Jones is creating a system where there are no queues. In other words, fans know immediately which events are sold out and where.

“We come in very fortunate to have a modern, scalable tech stack that's not going to have all these outages or things being down,” Jones said. “That's step one. The other thing is we’re being aggressively transparent about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. So with the Taylor Swift thing…you would know in real time if you actually have a chance of getting the tickets.”

Here’s how it works: Users register for Token’s app and then purchase tickets to either an in-person event, or an event in the metaverse through Animal Concerts. The purchased ticket automatically shows up in the form of a mintable NFT, which can then be used toward merchandise purchases, other ticketed events or, Adams’s hope for the future — external rewards like airline travel. The more active a user is on the site, the more valuable their NFT becomes.

Ticketmaster has dominated the music industry for so long because of its association with big name artists. To compete, Token is working on gaining access to their own slew of popular artists. They recently entered into a partnership with Animal Concerts, a live and non-live event experiences platform that houses artists like Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Robin Thicke.

“You'll see they do all the metaverse side of the house,” Jones said. “And we're going to be the [real-life] web3 sides of the house.”

In addition, Token prides itself on working with the artists selling on their platform to set up the best system for their fanbase, devoid of hefty prices and additional fees — something Ticketmaster users have often complained about. Jones believes where Ticketmaster fails, Token thrives. The app incentivizes users to share more data about their interests, venues and artists by operating on a kind of points system in the form of mintable NFTs.

“We can actually take the dataset and say there’s 100 million people in the globe that love Taylor Swift, so imagine she’s going on tour and we ask [the user], ‘Would you go to see her in Detroit?’ And imagine this place has 30,000 seats, but 100,000 people clicked ‘yes,’” he explained. “So you can actually inform the user before anything even happens, right? About what their options are and where to get it.”

Tixr, a Santa-Monica based ticketing app, was founded on the idea that modern ticketing platforms were “living in the legacy of the past.” They plan to attract users by offering them exclusive access to ticketed events that aren’t in Ticketmaster’s registry.

“It melts commerce that's beyond ticketing…to allow fans to experience and purchase things that don't necessarily have to do with tickets,” said Tixr CEO and Founder Robert Davari. “So merchandise, and experiences, and hospitality and stuff like that are all elegantly melded into this one, content driven interface.”

Tixr sells tickets to exclusive concerts like a Tyga performance at a night club in Arizona, general in-person festivals like ComplexCon, and partners with local vendors like The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach to sell tickets to the races. Plus, Davari said it’s equipped to handle high-demand, so customers aren’t spending hours waiting in digital queues.

Like Token, Tixr has also found success with a rewards program — in the form of fan marketing.

“There's nothing more powerful in the core of any event, brand, any live entertainment, [than] the community behind it,” Davari said. “So we build technology to empower those fans and to reward them for bringing their friends and spreading the word.”

Basically, if a user gets a friend to purchase tickets to an event, then the original user gets rewarded in the form of discounts or upgrades.

Coupled with their platforms’ ability to handle high-demand events, both Jones and Davari believe their platforms have what it takes to take on Ticketmaster. Expansion into the metaverse, they think, will also help even the playing field.

“So imagine you can't go to Taylor Swift,” Jones said. “What if you could purchase an exclusive to actually go to that exact same show over the metaverse? An artist’s whole world can expand past the stage itself.”

With the way ticketing for events works now, obviously not everyone always gets the exact price, venue or date they want. There are “winners and losers.” Jones’s hope is that by expanding beyond in-person events, there can be more winners.

“If there’s 100,000 people who want to go to one show and there's 37,000 seats, 70,000 are out,” he said. “You can't fight that. But what we can do is start to give them other opportunities to do things in a different way and actually still participate.”

Jones and Davari both teased that their platforms have some exciting developments in the works, but for now both Token and Tixr are set on making their own space within the industry.

“We simply want to advance this industry and make it more efficient and more pleasurable for fans to buy,” Davari said. “That's it.”

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