TikTok’s meteoric rise has made it the envy of its many competitors. Whilst it still isn’t the most popular social media app, it’s seemingly the most engaged social media app, with Western users spending the most time on it out of any other.
TikTok is Western app recreation of the Chinese app Douyin, a short video sharing social media app, highly popular with the younger generations. Its developer ByteDance has been accused of being controlled by the Chinese government, therefore many in the West have seen TikTok as a state-run Chinese propaganda operation. Clearly this is an exaggeration by many in the Western world. As usual whenever China creates a product that is better than theirs, they immediately turn it into something nefarious, in order to deflect their failings.
Creating a social media sensation
Creating a social media sensation isn’t just about having the best programmers create an app, after all Google failed to join the social media hierarchy with their failed rollout of Google+, shutdown in 2019. There is a unique composition that goes into making something viral and popular, that the big, rich companies just sometimes can’t replicate. Maybe being a big tech conglomerate just isn’t cool, and no matter what they make, it will always come off as a very standard and non-attractive option to socialise around. It would almost be like teenagers going to parties organised by their parents and not their peers.
In a way, this is one of the successes of TikTok. It wasn’t even a unique idea, as a similar platform Vine had tried a decade earlier and failed. Maybe Vine was just a bit too early. Most of the top Vine creators ended up moving to YouTube and enhancing that platform instead to be the main video provider in the Western internet.
Attracting the young generation
TikTok has taken some of YouTube’s thunder however, and whilst YouTube has responded with YouTube Shorts, YouTube is likely to go the way of Facebook eventually, something boomers use and not the young generation. After all the young generation want something for themselves, their own place, where their parents don’t follow.
Although that hasn’t stopped TikTok from attracting the older generations, who are desperate to insert themselves into relevancy whilst making money from online sponsorships too. TikTok has become as much a business ground as it has become a social media for the youth of today.
Control of TikTok
And for both these reasons, the USA and Israel wants total control of this platform; they don’t want the Chinese government to be at the helm. And so for the last few years, there’s been headlines about forcing TikTok to sell to US interests.
Under the Trump administration these talks came to a head, TikTok was facing a ban under the previous President Biden. However, Trump reversed that ban in the desire to make a deal to sell it to US investors instead.
Interestingly this deal doesn’t actually give TikTok itself to US control, but gives a US group the rights to run TikTok in the US, a separate version just for them, with all US users being part of this app.
Currently the main names to be involved in the takeover are Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Dell and even Barron Trump, the son of Donald Trump has been touted for a role at the new TikTok USA based app.
Future of TikTok in the US
ByteDance is rumoured to be providing, instead of their own TikTok algorithm, a copied version trained based on US users. Will this passed over algorithm be any good, or could ByteDance provide them with a rudimentary copy that isn’t fit for purpose? The true details of the proposed deal still remain hidden.
Recently, Trump has indicated that the US takeover deal has been approved to go ahead by Xi Jinping. China however remained close-lipped with their reply, taking a neutral position as if the negotiations had only really just begun. China has a great amount of leverage in this situation, acting as protection for ByteDance in order for them to achieve a fair exchange.
Finally It’s unlikely to be popular for the majority of TikTok users to stay with the app, if Trump allies and US interests take over the app and push it in a new direction. It could be as perilous a purchase as Twitter was for Elon Musk.
