Where myAI apps at - A historiographic approach to analyzing platform tools

Sep 11, 2026

ByteDance apps are examined through a “platform tools” lens rather than as discrete applications, focusing on TikTok and related ecosystem software. The analysis treats TikTok as a software-based resource that mediates platformization by extending ByteDance’s data-centric economic, infrastructural, and governmental logics across apps. The study surveys ByteDance’s AI-powered platform tools alongside non-AI tools using systematic financial and infrastructural analysis. Findings show how ByteDance accrues infrastructural and economic power through platform tools that drive dependence, interoperability across the app ecosystem, and parallel platformization, transforming apps into interconnected clusters of tools.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time2 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

CapCut as a signal of ByteDance’s strategy

Examining platform growth via platform tools

ByteDance app ecosystem and platform tools

Platform infrastructures and platform power

Where myAI apps at? A historiographic approach to analyzing platform tools Abstract TikTok is mainly discussed as a discrete app or in relation to its parent company ByteDance. This view neglects how TikTok and other ByteDance apps maintain and develop ByteDance’s highly complex app ecosystem. This paper therefore positions ByteDance-owned apps as both apps and “platform tools.” As a short-form video app, TikTok allows end-users to watch videos, creators to make and distribute content, advertisers to endorse products, and developers to build app features. As a platform tool, TikTok is a software-based resource that mediates “platformization,” extending TikTok’s economic, infrastructural, and governmental data-centric logic within and beyond ByteDance’s app ecosystem. Increasingly ByteDance’s platform tools rely heavily on AI technology because of ByteDance’s early investments in AI and the growing interest in AI in the cultural industries. We therefore survey ByteDance’s AI-powered platform tools alongside non-AI ones using systematic financial and infrastructural analysis, uncovering how ByteDance’s platform tools expand ByteDance as a multi-sided, multi-layered, and multi-situated platform. Platform tools, thus, facilitate growth along these three dimensions by encouraging platform dependence; interoperability and interdependence within ByteDance’s app ecosystem; and platformization, including“parallel platformization.” Our empirical work ultimately shows how ByteDance uses platform tools to accrue and operationalize infrastructural and economic power, and how apps have moved from discrete objects to interconnected clusters of platform tools. Introduction In April 2020, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance published the video-editing app CapCut, which reached 250 million downloads within a year ofits release. ByteDance promoted CapCut as a “free all-in-one” tool“for everyone to create anything anywhere,” singling out its AI-driven affordances, which range from automated video editors to speech-to-text converters (CapCut, 2024) . In this paper we argue that CapCut is indicative of ByteDance’s broader corporate strategy to expand its suite of software tools, specifically AIbased tools, across the app ecosystem. By doing so, we challenge the idea of TikTok and CapCut being understood as discrete apps. Instead, ByteDance’s apps are part of a growing, integrated app collection. In this sense, apps can be seen as assemblages of interrelated “media software,” or “software tools for creating, interacting with, and sharing media” (Manovich, 2013, p. 3) . In previous work, building on Foxman’s (2019) insights on the relationship between platforms and tools, we argued that apps such as CapCut and TikTok also function as “platform tools”(Authors) . In that capacity, ByteDance’s apps are deployed by different platform users, from cultural producers to advertisers, (1) to make content for ByteDance apps and (2) to integrate apps in ByteDance’s app ecosystem. For example, creators use TikTok’s editing features to design filters, which then serve as templates for new filters, or as editing tools for video production. Atthe same time, such filters are integrated back into CapCut, increasing its functionality. Thus, these efforts tie TikTok and CapCut together at the infrastructural level, as well as generate more revenue by attracting more end-users and more diverse user groups. In this paper we explore how ByteDance has expanded its infrastructural and economic footprint in the app economy by weaving a web of related apps. ByteDance’s competitors, together with a seemingly endless slew of start-ups, have followed suit with their own platform tools, which makes the question ofwho ownsand advances the means of“platform-dependent cultural production” ever more relevant (Poell et al., 2021) . More precisely, our inquiry into ByteDance’s platform tools points to the increasingly central role of generative AI in software tools. Examining p

FAQs

Why does the paper treat ByteDance-owned apps as “platform tools” rather than standalone apps?

It argues that apps like TikTok function as software resources mediating platformization, extending ByteDance’s data-centric logic across its app ecosystem. This perspective captures interdependence and infrastructural integration beyond a single app’s discrete features.

How does CapCut relate to ByteDance’s broader strategy in the paper?

CapCut is presented as an example of ByteDance expanding its suite of software tools, especially AI-based tools, across the ecosystem. The paper uses CapCut’s AI-driven capabilities and rapid adoption to support this strategic interpretation.

What analytical approach does the paper use to study ByteDance’s AI-powered platform tools?

It surveys ByteDance’s AI-powered platform tools alongside non-AI ones using systematic financial and infrastructural analysis. The goal is to uncover how platform tools expand ByteDance’s power across multiple dimensions of the platform.

Sep 11, 2026

Uploaded by Arica Lee