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Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

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Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#31

Post by tempsy »

someperson wrote: post #28

It's worth constantly re-iterating that Vine [1] was shutdown by Twitter in 2017 back when Twitter was losing a lot of cash. It was available for any tech company to purchase for pennies on the dollar and was losing $10 million/month to run [2]. Vine was very popular and a lot of people were very disappointed when it was shutdown. It predated TikTok and Musical.ly and certainly had the vast majority of users for shor…

my theory is that their current head of product, who was the founder of Periscope which Twitter bought pre-launch, made the argument for Live Video (his app) over Vine at that time when Live streaming eg Meerkat/Periscope looked to be the "next big thing" in social media (which it never became).

Twitter had to choose one video strategy and went with live because of Periscope and it ended up being the wrong decision.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#32

Post by babesh »

babesh wrote: post #25
tempsy wrote: post #23

Why doesn't Twitter just resurrect Vine? They literally have all the source code.

Vine wasn’t designed right. TikTok is much better designed in terms of content surfacing and content creation.

The potential of short form video was widely recognized at that time. It wasn’t only Vine taking a stab at it. It’s just taken till TikTok to come up with the right formula/execution.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#33

Post by searchableguy »

whoevercares wrote: post #9
ineedasername wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "You can you up, no can no BB" mean? Is it a phrase from SV culture?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=you%20can%20...

> Translated from Chinglish. aka If you can do it then you should go up and do it. It's used against people who criticize others' work, especially when the criticizer it not that much better. Often followed by "no can no BB", which means "if you can't do it then don't even criticize it".

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#34

Post by galuggus »

jameslk wrote: post #29
galuggus wrote: post #2

I already made it Twiktwok.github.io

That's awesome. It'd be interesting to see this applied as a general way to browse videos across the open web. Like StumbleUpon for videos.

Good idea. I could add reddit video next

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#36

Post by someperson »

tempsy wrote: post #31
someperson wrote: post #28

It's worth constantly re-iterating that Vine [1] was shutdown by Twitter in 2017 back when Twitter was losing a lot of cash. It was available for any tech company to purchase for pennies on the dollar and was losing $10 million/month to run [2]. Vine was very popular and a lot of people were very disappointed when it was shutdown. It predated TikTok and Musical.ly and certainly had the vast majority of users for shor…

my theory is that their current head of product, who was the founder of Periscope which Twitter bought pre-launch, made the argument for Live Video (his app) over Vine at that time when Live streaming eg Meerkat/Periscope looked to be the "next big thing" in social media (which it never became). Twitter had to choose one video strategy and went with live because of Periscope and it ended up being the wrong decision.

Twitter in 2016 was bleeding money. In that financial situation, offloading a product that was losing $10 million/month without an immediate path to profitability was a reasonable decision.

The question is why a cash rich Silicon Valley company didn't buy Vine for pennies on the dollar. It could have been Google. It could have been Apple. It could have been Microsoft. It could have been Facebook.

Personally, I think it could even have been revived by private equity (who would immediately do deep cost cutting to bring the burn rate down).

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#37

Post by mantap »

babesh wrote: post #25
tempsy wrote: post #23

Why doesn't Twitter just resurrect Vine? They literally have all the source code.

Vine wasn’t designed right. TikTok is much better designed in terms of content surfacing and content creation.

I don't agree with this at all. It was much easier to find good content on vine because vines spread organically. TikTok rewards whoever can appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#39

Post by holler »

How does this help the problem of ~3 companies dominating social media in the US? Congress just derided Facebook's ability to acquire Instagram in a public hearing a week ago, and now this feels like a similar play. It's a shame that TikTok has the baggage of being funded by China, because otherwise they created a great app that's so far been able to rapidly rise and compete against the incumbents. We need more of that.

Re: Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination

#40

Post by momokoko »

danhak wrote: post #19
Darmody wrote: post #3

The most toxic and the dumbest social network merged together. What could go wrong?

Do you see the irony of your posting a cynical, throwaway comment like this while complaining of toxicity on other platforms?

I did not see the parent comment and throwaway. It’s actually a valid insight that there are some alignment between the two platforms. Both appeal to the lower forms of entertainment. In a way they appeal to the same eyeballs. People looking to waste time with little long term benefit. They are both “quick fix” dopamine platforms.

So actually this comment is insightful. Is it cynical? Absolutely. But being cynical is sometimes a very valuable trait to have when picking winners and losers.

Having a similar type of user may actually allow twitter to unlock more potential than another potential acquirer with a more informed or high brow audience.

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