![]() ![]() One of TikTok’s most valuable assets is its recommendation algorithm, which highlights short videos for users. Algorithms need dataĪnother lesson concerns the nature of algorithms and the importance of refining them. And early this year Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms, an Indian ecommerce platform, to enhance its digital payment feature on WhatsApp. China-based Tencent, for example, invested in WeChat rival Kakao, becoming one of its largest shareholders in 2012, with a 13% stake. This is possible by competing in as many countries as they can.Ĭompanies also invest in their global competitors to help them get ahead. This proves companies need to constantly innovate and learn from one another to expand – and to avoid losing market share to rivals. In its early days, WhatsApp had a strong position in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, but its failure to innovate in voice messaging left an opening for WeChat, which launched a hold-to-talk feature in 2011 – two years before WhatsApp unveiled a similar feature – and quickly snared a big share of the market.Īnd when WhatsApp finally launched its own push-to-talk voice memo feature, it helped it become one of the top social media apps in Argentina. That’s one lesson from a case study involving four leading messaging apps I examined in my recent book, “ Global Social Media Design.” WhatsApp, founded in 2009, was the first in this space and quickly inspired similar offerings in other countries, such as WeChat in China, LINE in Japan and KakaoTalk in South Korea. Social media companies that don’t compete globally and continue to find new users will fall behind. And most of this explosive growth is in overseas – not local – markets. More users, a lot more revenue, a lot more profits. While the costs of running a social network increase with growth at a fairly constant rate, the profits jump exponentially with each additional user. Social media technology is inherently global because of a concept known as network effects. ![]() Tinder, Uber and Pinterest are all available in over 30 languages, while Airbnb can boast over 50. Most social media apps are quickly translated and released in dozens of languages early on in their life spans. WhatsApp had 2 billion, while WeChat and Instagram are at about 1.2 billion and 1 billion, respectively. The companies including Chinese telecom giant Huawei, were added to the United States’ "entity list" due to national security concerns.Īlso read: The ‘US vs.Social media companies have little choice but to behave globally – something clear from their massive number of users.įacebook, for example, had 2.7 billion monthly active users at the end of June – representing more than a third of the world population – and only about 10% of them are in the U.S. The US Commerce Department had blacklisted over 70 Chinese tech companies, preventing them from buying US-made chips and components. The app's owner, ByteDance, has been in talks with software company Oracle and supermarket giant Walmart to finalise a deal that would see TikTok's US assets shifted into a new entity, to avoid a ban in the country.Īn earlier court filing had said the US Commerce Department was reviewing whether Trump's claims about TikTok's threat to national security justified the attempts to ban it from smartphone app stores and deny it vital technical services. Video sharing app TikTok has about 800 million users worldwide, of which 100 million are in the US. Messaging app WeChat has more than one billion users worldwide, but says the US only accounts for 2% of its revenue. Trump had claimed that the spread in the US of mobile apps developed and owned by Chinese firms threatened "the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States". What the delay means is that both apps can continue to operate in the US while new staff at government agencies "become familiar with the issues in this case", according to the legal documents. The new administration has now asked for an "abeyance" - or suspension - of proceedings while it revisits whether the apps really pose a threat. However, the courts had temporarily blocked the White House's attempted ban, and the presidential election had put the issue in the back burner.īoth companies had taken legal action against the proposed bans. Outgoing president Donald Trump had sought to ban both apps, claiming they were a national security threat. ![]() What could come as a big relief to Chinese tech companies banned in the US, newly elected President Joe Biden has temporarily halted legal action against Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat, which could have been banned in the United States.
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