This Chinese company wants to buy Snap, Twitter and Quora
TikTok is owned by Beijing-based Bytedance and is especially popular with the Z generation. They use the social media platform to create and share fun, addictive 15-second videos. TikTok has been downloaded more than 104 million times in the US and has approximately 300 million monthly active users in China. The first TikTok celebs have now become a fact.
No lack of ambition. No less than $ 1 billion was spent in 2018 on ads on Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. The Wall Street Journal now reports that Bytedance is interested in buying Snap (Snapchat’s parent company), Twitter and Quora.
The acquisitions should help TikTok to attract an older target group. The app is doing well in the 16-24 age group, but elderly people are not yet using the app.
What makes TikTok so addictive are the underlying algorithms that offer seemingly effortlessly measured content to the user. That makes the app difficult to put away. Nothing new under the sun, YouTube and Facebook do this in itself, but what makes the app unique is that it is not dominated by the same well-known influencers who moan about views and subscribers. It is an app for very normal people (or: children) who do something fun, funny or smart.
The success of TikTok has not escaped Silicon Valley. Facebook recently launched Lasso an app that cannot be described otherwise as an ordinary TikTok clone.