There will be two TikToki. The Americans will get theirs, and the Poles will get Chinese, of course
Microsoft has confirmed a rather unbelievable rumor : talks are ongoing to take over the entertainment social network TikTok. There is no end to the weirdness, as the result will be two TikToki: the American one and the one with us.
When we first read about Microsoft’s alleged acquisition of TikTok, it was hard to believe. The administration of the president of the United States believes that TikTok is a dangerous tool in the hands of Chinese intelligence, and in order for it to continue to function on American territory, it must change hands. American.
This new owner would be Microsoft, which has already reached an agreement with ByteDance – the current operator of TikTok. Both sides are now waiting for approval from US antitrust authorities. If they do not object, the transaction is to be finalized on September 15.
Before we begin to wonder what Microsoft’s TikTok is up to, let’s first discuss the bizarre form of this transaction itself. There will be two TikToki.
The agreement between Microsoft and ByteDance assumes that the Redmond giant will take over TikTok in the regions of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In other regions, the popular social network will be invariably operated by ByteDance, including Poland. How exactly this strange division of the network is supposed to look like – we do not know yet.
Why does Microsoft need TikTok? That’s a billion dollar question.
TikTok is a social network that young people especially like. As part of it, users share creatively edited short movies. It is not clear why the company needs such a service and how it should connect with Microsoft’s resources such as Office, Teams, Dynamics or LinkedIn.
Microsoft is gradually getting rid of the last remnants of its failures on the consumer market. There is no trace of Zune or Xbox TV studios, and soon the last consumer devices that work with the Microsoft Cortana assistant will stop working. The company has focused almost entirely on delivering products and services to help users be productive – in fact, Skype and Xbox are the only exceptions.
A popular theory circulating among astonished experts – for example, Mary Jo Foley admits in her column that she doesn’t understand any of this – is the desire to orient TikTok users to video games. A popular social network could significantly increase the exposure of the Xbox brand among young people and allow Microsoft to quickly wipe Mixer tears .
My theory is … advertising.
All the turmoil around TikTok is due to suspicions by American authorities of spying. The service is to be tied to Chinese intelligence and – suspected to be – a spy tool and a potential propaganda tool. The Chinese network fits Microsoft’s ecosystem like a fist in the nose, but data and privacy protection is something the company specializes in and attracts customers to.
It is possible that the transfer of TikTok’s code and data to Azure servers, where the data will be supervised and processed with the utmost care and in accordance with American regulations, is an appropriate goal in itself. Various strategic corporate customers, seeing how well Microsoft is managing such a large database, would be more likely to move more parts of their IT infrastructure to Microsoft’s cloud.
However, this is only my theory, which is not supported by too many facts. And the funniest thing – for Polish TikTok users, not much changes. ByteDance remains the data administrator and the TikTok service in our country. It’s hard to say if it’s good or bad.
There will be two TikToki. The Americans will get theirs, and the Poles will get Chinese, of course
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