Social video platform TikTok,
TikTok, a social video platform that allows you to share short videos, was first developed and released by Chinese company ByteDance in 2016. In 2017, it entered the global market in earnest by acquiring the social video platform Musical.ly. TikTok, which started to raise the profile based on the popularity of youths around the world, has grown into a huge platform with more than 1 billion users worldwide. Reuters, an information provider in the UK, valued TikTok at around $50 billion.
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| 🔺 tiktok.com |
TikTok
facing a worldwide threat of exit,
A crisis also came to TikTok, that had been on the up and up. The US government has argued that ByteDance, a developer of TikTok, could pose a threat to national security, such as securing personal information of US users or censoring some content. US Secretary of State Pompeo called the Chinese Communist Party a “evil empire,” and strongly criticized that personal data of TikTok users were falling into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. In addition, a security expert at the Swiss e-mail service ‘ProtonMail’ raised the suspicion by releasing a report stating that TikTok not only collects a large amount of personal information, but also cooperates with the CCP's cross-border surveillance and censorship activities.
ByteDance
countered that they put a top priority on providing a safe app that protects
the privacy of TikTok users, but the US government eventually banned the use of
TikTok in their country. India, which had been in a border armed conflict with
China, also had banned the use of TikTok ahead of the United States. Starting with the ban on the TikTok
in India and the U.S., which are the first and second countries of using
TikTok, seems that TikTok may be withdrawn from India, Australia and Japan.
Last week TikTok was dropped the top ranking for Triller in the App store’s
free download.
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| 🔺 flickr.com ©Solen Feyissa |
Patent
infringement lawsuit, influencer left,
On
July 29th, the Triller, who took the top positions from TikTok, filed a patent
infringement lawsuit against TikTok and ByteDance. Triller claimed that TikTok's 'Green Screen
Video' feature that synchronizes multiple videos, which was released in
December of last year has infringed Triller’s patent, ‘Systems and methods for
creating music videos synchronized with an audio track’ which was registered in
2017. In addition to the lawsuit, four influencers, including Josh Richard, who
had more than 20 million followers on TikTok, said they are going to leave
TikTok and move to the Triller. Also unfavorable situation for TikTok continues
such as Facebook and Instagram promised financial support to popular creators to
attract TikTok's influencers to the ‘Reels’ scheduled to be released next
month.
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| 🔺 wipsglobal.com US patent 'Systems and methods for creating music videos synchronized with an audio track; |
M&A possibility of TikTok,
President
Trump banned using TikTok in the U.S. and warned that TikTok will be completely
closed if the business is not sold by 9/15. Along with this, in relation to Microsoft’s
negotiations to take over TikTok, Trump also said that he would approve that other
US company takes over TikTok. In addition, he added that the brand itself is a
great asset, unlike criticism of TikTok, and that the government should have a
significant portion of the proceeds if it is acquired. Nevertheless, it is
known that Google and Facebook, besides Microsoft, are showing considerable
interest in acquiring TikTok. However, industry insiders predicted that Google
and Facebook would have a lot of difficulties as they were identified as
antitrust violations by the US government. It is believed that Microsoft has a
de facto advantage in the acquisition.
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| 🔺 flickr.com ©Christoph Scholz |
If
the acquisition is negated, TikTok will have to withdraw its business from the
US market. We’re going to have to see what kind of decision ByteDance (TikTok’s
mother company) will make on the acquisition by the US government's coercion.
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