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Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#101

Post by rmorey »

slipheen wrote: post #64

I think it's a clever play. It would help address the spyware concern by moving it to a US company, and give them a better foothold in Social Networking than Linked-in provides. I'd have a few concerns about if MS can keep it growing- For one, I worry that Microsoft may mismanage it, similar to how they treated Skype. We saw Yahoo buy many reasonable smaller social networks (Flickr, Delicious, Tumblr) and was never a…

I agree that they botched Skype, but I think some of their more recent acquisitions - namely: Mojang, Xamarin, GitHub - have gone pretty well, IMO

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#102

Post by slipheen »

sanxiyn wrote: post #88
slipheen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.omnicoreagency.com/tiktok-statistics/ > 41 percent of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. That seems rather youth-heavy when compared to Facebook (Timeline), Twitter, YouTube, Instagram. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does come with risks.

I was more against "social network" part than "youth-based" part. TikTok is a broadcast media, not a social network.

Fair enough, I suppose it depends on how broad your categories are.

Personally, I absolutely consider YouTube a video-based social network. You follow people/brands, have at timeline, can contribute comments on what they post, etc.

It doesn't tend to have as broad a social graph as something like FB, but almost nothing does. Twitter (for example) also has a large number of popular public accounts, similar to YouTube.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#104

Post by sgillen »

franklampard wrote: post #58
emptysongglass wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly it. There's widespread fear that China is buying its way into the personal data of billions through its state-sponsored businesses like Huawei and ByteDance.

Is TikTok really state-sponsored? Do you have any source?

I think there is also the impression that, even if china has not already been leaning on TikTok, if they ever did TikTok would necessarily relent. Whereas in the US we have examples of companies (e.g. apple) denying requests from the Feds.

Now I'm not saying this is necessarily true, but I think that is where the concern is coming from.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#106

Post by Cshelton »

slipheen wrote: post #64

I think it's a clever play. It would help address the spyware concern by moving it to a US company, and give them a better foothold in Social Networking than Linked-in provides. I'd have a few concerns about if MS can keep it growing- For one, I worry that Microsoft may mismanage it, similar to how they treated Skype. We saw Yahoo buy many reasonable smaller social networks (Flickr, Delicious, Tumblr) and was never a…

Well, Skype the brand was botched, but Skype is basically what powers Microsoft Teams now. Which is widely successful due to it being bundled with Microsoft 365 (also Teams is pretty decent compared to the comp).

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#109

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #43

This is not good. Facebook or Google would be worse, but Microsoft is only marginally less bad here.

Not good for Microsoft is more like it; reminds me of the attempted Yahoo acquisition.

Microsoft is a platform company; they do not "get" social media or user engagement (e.g. MSN, which has sputtered on feebly for years) so they'll wind up tanking TikTok for sure.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#110

Post by altaria »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #82
jtmarmon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking personally, here's why TikTok concerns me: TikTok is a Chinese business, and China has shown no limit to how much it will meddle in the affairs of and even take control of Chinese businesses for the furthering of the Chinese state's agenda. Simultaneously, TikTok has captured the daily attention spans of millions of Americans, many of them especially young and impressionable. They've captured their attention…

"Imagine China subtly promoting videos to create outrage and civil unrest in the US, or to feed anti-US propaganda to germinate terrorist groups in the US." our president is doing a fine job of that now with his twitter account.

Or, you know, our mainstream media exclusively broadcasting videos without contextualization of white police officers killing black men to the country and ignoring all other racial configurations of violence in order to stoke racial tension.
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