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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

#221

Post by basch »

kyle-rb wrote: post #202
elorant wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They gain access to a huge community of mostly young people to promote their gaming products. You pair it with a good chat service, which they already have through Teams or Skype, and then you can take on Twitch or Discord, which are also gaining a lot of traction.

> you can take on Twitch or Discord Microsoft already tried to take on Twitch, with Mixer, and failed. (Gamers will probably be wary about jumping onto Microsoft's next doomed platform.) And anecdotally, Discord replaced Skype for a lot of people in the gaming community, and I don't see people leaving it very easily.

I find the closure of Mixer incredibly short sighted IF they end up buying TikTok. They easily could have rebranded/merged Mixer as TiKTok Live and moved their exclusive contracts over to the TikTok brand.

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

#222

Post by russli1993 »

colordrops wrote: post #115
ferest wrote: post #97

In short, only American companies can have access to the brains of Americans. There is no law to prohibit an app of being used in US, and there is no evidence TikTok broke any existing law operating within US. All the talking point being so far is because it's a chinese company. This is literally how black people was treated. It's interesting to see how protectionism change the country brand of equal business opportu…

The analogy would only make sense if black people were a foreign economic and nuclear powerhouse that have been blocking US apps with even more prejudice. Tit for tat restrictions are standard practice with international trade and not evidence of racism.

It would be equivalent if Tiktok is banned in the US and only in the US. But this forced sale of Tiktok would definitely include TikTok's non US business as well. The intention from the U.S. government is to not allow Chinese nationals to own any impactful business or technology not only in the US but internationally. Huawei's case was 5G, tiktok and bytedance is social media.

Bytedance is incorporated in the Cayman islands. Yes it is founded by a Chinese national, but it also have non-Chinese people on its board and in the management. And Chinese people do not all agree with the government, or ccp's ideology push.

Bytedance has a Hongkong subsidiary to manage mainland China business, one of them is douyin. And U.S. subsidiary to manage Tiktok. Douyin and TikTok are separate products, no data is shared between them. The U.S. subsidiary is managed by Americans and employs American. Content regulation is managed by Americans, Data is stored in the U.S. Tiktok is planning for outside review of the data security and algorithms for recommendation system. There is no way Chinese government can force their censorship on to tiktok. Why would TikTok employees agree to Chinese government's demands? They are Americans living in America. How will Chinese government enforces their demands? The only thing they could do is force shutting down Douyin in China or arrest the Bytedance's management in they reside on Chinese soil. But if that happens it would be another news story. There is no legal means for which Chinese government can exert control over Tiktok. Therefore I don't think Tiktok being forced to censor speech or hand data to Chinese government is really realistic.

Source: https://www.bytedance.com/en/ see corporate structure

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

#223

Post by freehunter »

nsl73 wrote: post #178
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…

> It would help address the spyware concern by moving it to a US company Does anyone else remember when housing data in US severs was considered less private than alternatives? It’s incredible that Azure, and the rest of the us based cloud providers, have been able to rebrand American severs as the cloud so successfully that they are well known for being secure and safe.

Every major cloud vendor has zones outside the US. Just because you’re hosted on Azure doesn’t mean you’re hosted in the US or that US law applies to you.

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

#224

Post by nix23 »

vogre wrote: post #207
kohtatsu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't give a flying fuck about a company's market cap, I care about what it offers to me and the world. Markets are a means to an end, not something to fetishize.

Market cap is actually a quite precise estimation of what company offers to the world. Money is just information about usefulness. If you are useful to other people you've got money. If someone is useful to you, you give money.

Like Theranos?

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

#225

Post by pmlnr »

skwb wrote: post #211
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…

| give them a better foothold in Social Networking than Linked-in provides. So you're saying that GitHub isn't a social network for coding?

Github is not a social network, and is should never be one.

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

#226

Post by ponker »

muststopmyths wrote: post #114

Wait, so I'm going to have to install the TikTok For Business with Sharepoint integration in my Teams? I guess anything makes sense to a company that paid $26 billion USD for LinkedIn.

You do know that LinkedIn is doing somewhere near $10 billion of revenue a year, right?

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

#227

Post by ponker »

muststopmyths wrote: post #148
hellomyguys wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess anything makes sense to a company that paid $26 billion USD for LinkedIn. Is there data to support that this was overvalued? Not personally a big fan of LinkedIn, but it seemed like probably a good long-term buy for Microsoft.

I don't know, tbh. But to my understanding, it was not profitable before the acquisition. It does generate ~5 billion dollars in revenue now, but Microsoft won't tell you how much of that is profit. Even if I charitably apportion 1B profit (which I bet Microsoft would trumpet if that was a thing), that's 20+ years to make the 26B back. My bigger problem with LinkedIn is that it's a cesspool of recruiter spam. Lynda.c…

You're not taking into account any of the strategic value to Microsoft. Like how they can integrate LI Sales Navigator into Dynamics to compete with Salesforce, etc.

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

#229

Post by ridv »

basch wrote: post #221
kyle-rb wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can take on Twitch or Discord Microsoft already tried to take on Twitch, with Mixer, and failed. (Gamers will probably be wary about jumping onto Microsoft's next doomed platform.) And anecdotally, Discord replaced Skype for a lot of people in the gaming community, and I don't see people leaving it very easily.

I find the closure of Mixer incredibly short sighted IF they end up buying TikTok. They easily could have rebranded/merged Mixer as TiKTok Live and moved their exclusive contracts over to the TikTok brand.

From the outside looking in, it seems like Mixer had other factors that contributed to the decision to close up shop[1].

It seems like Phil Spencer had a meeting with the affected ex-employee but nothing came out of it[2].

Adding on to that, a leaked town hall video really painted a grim image of the company and the management internally.[3]

[1]https://twitter.com/MilanKLee/status/1274830702538821632

[2] https://twitter.com/MilanKLee/status/1286008870935179266

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RZxaSLyjUM

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

#230

Post by marinman »

basch wrote: post #185
noarchy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems like a dumb move, why would MS want to get tied up in the horrors of social media when they have such a profitable empire. They bought LinkedIn, which increasingly resembles a niche social media for professionals, all the way down to a news feed that is increasingly filled with motivational junk Then there's Github, which used to advertise itself as "social coding". Microsoft has done plenty already to ge…

would Minecraft almost fit into that as well? At least from the sense of buying an existing community.

If you squint, you can see the Minecraft fit: along with the Xbox side, it's quasi "coding" or "developing" for kids. Basically, you hook the kids who are interested in developing super, duper early.
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