‘Twitter is also interested in acquiring TikTok’s American division’

According to sources from The Wall Street Journal, Twitter is also interested in a takeover of the American share of social medium TikTok. However, the social media platform is much smaller and less wealthy than the other hijacker on the coast: Microsoft.

The talks between Twitter and Chinese TikTok owner ByteDance are not as advanced as those with Microsoft, yet Twitter seems to have some confidence in it. Precisely because Twitter is so small relative to Microsoft, the company would get rid of it more easily when it comes to competition law in the event of an acquisition.

According to the US newspaper, Microsoft and ByteDance had been in talks for several weeks when President Trump announced on July 31 that he planned to ban TikTok. The talks were then paused for a while, but now the position of the president is that ByteDance has until September 15 to get rid of TikTok, otherwise the ban will still come. In addition, Trump wants the government to receive part of the takeover amount as a facilitator.

It is striking that Twitter had a TikTok-like service not very long ago – until 2016. That was Vine, and the company has had that in house since 2012. A reason for the closure was not given at the time, but it was known that the company was financially unhealthy.

TikTok is a social medium where users can post videos from 3 to a maximum of 60 seconds. This is often comic or musical content, but it is not required. The service has been available outside of China since the acquisition of Musical.ly in 2017.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has mixed feelings about a potential acquisition of TikTok by Microsoft. He calls entering the world of social media ‘not easy’ and calls forcing a takeover by the White House ‘strange’ and the demand for a finder’s fee ‘doubly strange’. He is, however, in favor of more competition in this area.