
Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination - jhatax
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-tiktok-have-held-preliminary-talks-about-possible-combination-11596925449
======
justinzollars
The United States' brand is that we are an open, dynamic, stable place to do
business in. If you have capital its safe here because of our respect of the
rule of law, and private property rights. We should strive to be the best
place on earth to do business in. We are an open country and we benefit from
being open. We benefit from competition. We are literally richer by definition
- when business like TikTok choose to operate in the United States.

The decision to force transfer of business undermines our country's brand and
our reputation. It's sad that Twitter is participating in this shake down.

I posted this in another thread and colorfully illustrates that Twitter is no
better than what they accuse TikTok of being.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24095334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24095334)

~~~
fermienrico
United States' brand has been damaged by our own doing. Specifically, the
executives that paid off the politicians whose job was to ensure a level
playing field in terms of trade. I am really convinced of the following, open
for critiques:

US Executives paid off politicians who then allowed trade deficit to pile up,
we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some 30
trillion dollars of growth in China. Whatever was returned then went into
American executives' who made sure that the median wages were as low as
possible (paid off politicians again) which lead to massive wealth inequality
here domestically.

I think the people to blame are not executives. These are the wolves. The real
assholes of America are the politicians, both left and right, who put their
own interest before public's. Infrastructure, education, building the nation
to be capable to compete was put aside, instead they promoted consumerism,
big-fat American dream and laughed off to their multimillion dollar estates.

You make a good point about rule of law - yes, it is in favor of big corp. Not
for medium and small businesses. Italy has some ridiculous % of GDP coming
from companies less than 50 employees. I forgot what that % is, but it is like
50% or more.

This is what America could have been. A powerhouse of innovation, extremely
motivated workforce, excellent education system and health system, virtually
no poverty and infrastructure could be unlike any other nation.

Living here in Silicon Valley, it feels like a crumbling place ridden with
crime, feces and homeless people everywhere. Depressing.

~~~
refurb
_we saw one of the biggest wealth transfers in the history of mankind - Some
30 trillion dollars of growth in China._

Economic growth is not the same as a wealth transfer. It's not a zero sum
game.

~~~
fermienrico
It is an opportunity cost though, no? That wealth could have resulted in
domestic progress.

If I am making Jeans in 1995 in America, but in 2000 I lay off workers, shut
down cotton fields, dying processes, etc. and off shore it, while hiring 2
people instead of 50 - to manage suppliers, that indeed, unquestionably has
resulted in loss of wealth.

Can you explain how this would be a zero sum game? I know @naval keeps tooting
that and it makes sense to me in macroeconomically, but I can't convince
myself - I think of a closed thermodynamic system with system energy = work
done + heat transfer out. That's how I think of the economic systems too when
it comes to microeconomics.

~~~
refurb
My comment was more that it's _not_ a zero sum game and that a significant
part of China's growth was not at the expense of the US (but part of it
obviously was).

By offshoring the manufacturing of jeans, American jobs were lost, correct.
But presumably the cost of manufacturing was lowered which opened up new
markets (can charge less and still make a profit) and those profits flowed
back into the US. And at the same time, American consumers benefited by lower
cost jeans (whether price decrease or a slowing of price increases).

The Chinese benefited because they were get a piece of that overall value
chain - the manufacturing part.

~~~
bduerst
Pretty Much - I seem to remember an Economist article talking about how the
2000's saw some of the largest gains for the middle class globally, with
China's middle class being one of the contributing factors.

But you're right, jobs are not zero sum either. They create new jobs, which in
turn create other new jobs, and so forth. If they didn't, we'd all pretty much
be unemployed except for farmers.

------
someperson
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 short looping videos before it shutdown. Previously
users have suggested Vine used a follow/subscribe-model and was not
algorithmic like TikTok, but adding a news feed algorithm to keep up with a
competitor would not have been that hard.

It's been reported Microsoft is looking at buying TikTok with some investors
valuing the company at $30-$70 billion. [3] That number is high in the context
of this latest WSJ article, which says Twitter has $7.8 billion in cash and a
market cap of $29 billion.

However, TikTok reportedly earned $5.6 billion in revenue in Q1 2020 [4], and
reportedly made a $3 billion net profit in 2019 [5]. It those numbers are
correct then TikTok (which often called a Vine clone, and Vine 2.0) has grown
bigger than Twitter itself.

This leapfrog happened in an era of cash-rich Silicon Valley software
companies, where investment funding is easily obtainable.

It's worth reflecting deeply on this turn of events, and why Vine was allowed
to wither and die, only for a better executed clone immediately take over and
dominate.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_(service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine_\(service\))

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/07/revive-
vine](https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/07/revive-vine)

[3] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-aims-for-a-deal-to-
bu...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-aims-for-a-deal-to-buy-tiktoks-
u-s-business-11596418842)

[4] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-results-
idUSKBN...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-results-
idUSKBN23O114)

[5] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-
profit.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-profit.html)

~~~
lilyball
> _adding a news feed algorithm to keep up with a competitor would not have
> been that hard_

I'm not convinced this is true. TikTok's algorithmic "For You Page" is
_astonishingly_ good. Somehow TikTok manages to zero in on stuff relevant to
users extremely quickly, and without relying on spamming a lot of general
interest popular content. I created a TikTok account recently and literally
within minutes I was getting an extremely personalized FYP (For You Page)
without even following anyone. If my wife and I compare our FYPs we'll find
virtually no overlap (possibly a few cat videos but that's it). I've never
seen anyone else do an algorithmic feed even half as good as this. Everyone
else seems to rely on just spamming you with general-interest popular videos
and hope you'll find enough people to follow to fill out the feed yourself.
TikTok's FYP isn't even driven by follows, that's a separate feed.

~~~
someperson
Try opening YouTube in an incognito tab and start watching a few videos (on
say, cooking). You'll notice the recommended videos on the homepage gets very
accurate very fast.

The algorithms behind recommendation engines are well understood. Companies
can and do invest huge amounts into making their algorithms better and it yes,
it definitely takes a lot of effort to tweak and refine the algorithm to make
the overall experience addictive and relevant.

But the seemingly widely held idea that TikTok builds better recommendation
algorithms than other companies (including Facebook's News Feed) doesn't seem
to stand up to scrutiny.

~~~
kanox
Twitter does not appear to have a recommendation algorithm worth a damn.

~~~
bobsil1
Content, no. Ads, when it really counts ($), yes.

------
rel2thr
I don’t get how twitter and msft could buy just the US operations of a company
like tiktok... like do the developers and PMs still work in China and then
twitter just helps maintain the servers. Or does the app diverge into 2 apps
at that point with 2 separate dev teams?

~~~
arielm
There are already separate apps for China and non-China users (and android is
split across Europe).

~~~
Kiro
> and android is split across Europe

What does that mean?

~~~
arielm
There’s one app that’s available in some European countries and a separate one
for others.

I don’t remember the exact breakdown, but I believe one covers some of the
Asian countries (where Google Play is available)

------
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.

------
loktarogar
The Vine killers combining with the Vine successors?

------
galuggus
I already made it

Twiktwok.github.io

~~~
jameslk
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.

~~~
galuggus
Good idea. I could add reddit video next

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

~~~
thekyle
Maybe management don't want to admit to shareholders that they made a horrible
mistake.

~~~
bduerst
The brand is dead, which is important for social network apps. Relaunching
would peak interest for a few weeks before quickly becoming a second mistake.

------
tanilama
I actually prefer Twitter than MSFT

After all, they had Vine back then

~~~
chii
and managed it terribly, and shut it down to the disappointment of many.

MSFT is a much better business, and have the cash to back a long strategy
imho.

~~~
bduerst
Microsoft also mismanaged skype. They're an enterprise software company, not
B2C.

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api
Along the same lines as "Scientists consider crossing Ebola with Influenza to
create the most deadly and most contagious disease ever!"

