TikTok is in discussions with U.S. lawmakers about a $1.5 billion plan to reorganize its operations in order to provide more transparency and allay fears of Chinese spying and data manipulation. The talks have become more urgent in recent months as regulators at the federal and state level are threatening to ban the short-form video app on government-issued devices. TikTok parent ByteDance been negotiating with CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. since 2019, when an investigation was opened following the Beijing-based media firm’s acquisition of Musical.ly, which it merged into TikTok. Continue reading TikTok Considers $1.5 Billion Plan to Quell Security Concerns

Insider Intelligence forecasts that 2023 will mark the first time since 2014 that the combined digital advertising market share for Meta Platforms and Alphabet will fall below 50 percent, indicating erosion of their “duopoly.” Projection of a 2.5 percent drop due to increased competition from rivals including Amazon, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft will put the pair at a projected 48.4 percent this year, according to the research group. While the trajectory is likely to garner negative media and investor attention, it is a plus from the perspective of fending off global antitrust attacks. Continue reading Digital Ad Share for Meta, Alphabet to Drop Below 50 Percent

The U.S. House and Senate have introduced companion bills to ban TikTok and other apps that censor news, pose threats to the personal data of U.S. citizens and entities or engage in other surreptitious behaviors. The Senate bill, advanced by Marco Rubio (R-Florida) is called the ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act, an acronym for Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party. The related House bill has bipartisan support from Representatives Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois). Continue reading Congress Intros Bills to Ban TikTok Due to Security Concerns

Amazon is introducing Inspire, a feature that lets customers shop from a custom feed of videos and photos. Drawing comparisons to TikTok, Inspire is currently available to select U.S. users, with plans for a national rollout in the coming months. Inspire takes Amazon further into social shopping territory, where competitors Meta Platforms and Alphabet have followed TikTok and its parent ByteDance into the short-video shopping format. While the U.S. and Europe have failed to duplicate the astounding volume of China’s social shopping, Amazon — with a customer base in the hundreds of millions — could jump-start it. Continue reading Amazon Pushes into Social Shopping with Its Inspire Feature

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s executive order banning TikTok from state agencies has added further fuel to Washington’s calls for an outright ban on the Chinese-owned short-form video platform. The South Dakota tourism department deleted its account and 60,000 followers, and the state’s public broadcasting service and six public universities are planning how to move forward. Nebraska in 2020 became the first U.S. state to implement a government agency TikTok ban. Now a movement seems to be gaining momentum, with South Carolina, Arkansas and Maryland at various stages of action in dealing with the perceived national security threat. Continue reading U.S. States Rise Up Against TikTok Over Security Concerns

TikTok is taking steps to ensure U.S. user data is secure and that young people will be protected from harmful content, company CEO Shou Zi Chew said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit. “We have very rigorous data-access protocols,” the executive said Wednesday, addressing concerns expressed by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. Chew said TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, plans to work with Oracle as its data storage provider based in large part on the company’s strong security protocols. Continue reading TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew Determined to Solve Data Issues

Google is stepping up in-app shopping, adding it to YouTube Shorts. “Doom scrolling is about to become doom shopping,” heralds the official blog of Nasdaq, where Google parent Alphabet trades. Now those parsing the YouTube feed of videos 60-seconds or less will have the option to purchase items instantly rather than through redirection to a third-party site. The move comes as Google and others saw digital ad revenue contract this year as a result of economic headwinds and increased competition — notably from TikTok, which is tracking to double its advertising income in 2022. Continue reading YouTube Shorts Testing In-App Shopping, Affiliate Marketing

TikTok is closing in on its downward revised 2022 ad revenue target of $10 billion, according to research firm Insider Intelligence. The ByteDance company had initially projected $12 billion but adjusted the forecast due to a digital advertising downturn that’s affected everyone from Alphabet to Meta Platforms. Despite the hedge, TikTok’s ad haul this year will nearly double that of 2021, and is expected to surpass the performance of Twitter and Snap. However, it still trails advertising on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, which generated more than $84 billion in the first nine months of 2022 (essentially flat). Continue reading After Doubling Ad Revenue, TikTok Turns to In-App Shopping

TikTok is launching a new feature called Profile Kit that gives creators the option of displaying up to six videos on other sites. In-app access to off-site link-in-bio landing platforms is a feature of the Profile Kit, with freemium social media landing page Linktree announced as TikTok’s first Profile partner. Some are calling the Profile Kit expansion a savvy way for Tiktok to spread its influence with a light footprint during a time of regulatory scrutiny. Leveraging engagement, TikTok is also launching Focused View, an ad unit that advertisers will pay for only if users engage for at least 6 seconds. Continue reading TikTok Launches User Profile Kit and Intros Focused View Ads

An expansion push for short-form video service TikTok has proven costly for parent ByteDance, which saw losses triple to more than $7 billion in 2021, according to an internal document leaked from the private company. ByteDance revenue grew by almost 80 percent in 2021, to $61.7 billion, and the company did manage to eke out an operating profit for Q1 2022, reports say, a significant benchmark. TikTok crossed the one billion subscriber threshold in less than five years — faster than any other social media firm. The company’s latest stock buyback plan puts its market valuation at $300 billion. Continue reading TikTok Parent ByteDance Sees Losses Rise but Shows Profit

TikTok is said to be partnering with Los Angeles-based TalkShopLive to handle its live shopping initiative in North America after an in-house UK effort produced lackluster results. Due to hit the U.S. in time for the holiday season, TikTok Shop will be built on technology and support from TalkShopLive as it positions live-stream shopping hosted by influencers, brands and retailers selling products on the short-form video platform. Launched last year, TikTok Shop UK was the ByteDance company’s first such effort outside of Asia, where it is available in countries including Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines. Continue reading TikTok May Team Up with TalkShopLive for a Holiday Launch

Executives from four social media giants defended the privacy, security and content moderation protocols of their platforms to the Senate Homeland Security Committee Wednesday. In her first appearance before Congress, TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas was grilled on whether the short-form video app shares data about American citizens with the Chinese government. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is based in Beijing, and its potential censorship of user content was another area of concern. Questions for the group — which included representatives from Meta Platforms, YouTube and Twitter — ranged from extremists to biometrics. Continue reading TikTok on the Hot Seat at Senate Homeland Security Hearing

Instagram seems to be having a hard time gaining traction against TikTok, whose users collectively spend 197.8 million hours daily on the platform, compared to the 17.6 million hours a day Instagram users spend viewing Reels, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal sourcing Meta Platforms internal research. The August report, “Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022,” indicates that Reels engagement was down 13.6 percent “over the previous four weeks — and that ‘most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.’” Of about 11 million U.S. creators on Instagram, only 2.3 million, or 20.7 percent, post Reels monthly. Continue reading Internal Meta Study Shows Reels Struggling Against TikToks

Instagram is testing a new way users can personalize feeds based on their own input rather than relying exclusively on algorithms. Parent company Meta Platforms is inviting select users to mark posts in Explore as “Not Interested,” and plans to soon add ways to stop seeing posts with certain words, phrases or emoji in the caption or hashtags by adjusting filter settings. The Explore tab lets users discover new content and accounts they aren’t currently following. “By tapping Not Interested, it removes the post from your feed immediately, and we’ll suggest fewer posts like it in the future,” Meta said. Continue reading Instagram Users Customize Recommendations in Latest Test

Popular short-form video platform TikTok is garnering more unwanted attention, this time for tracking users’ keystrokes via a the ByteDance-owned video app’s browser. The feature was discovered by privacy researcher Felix Krause, a former Google engineer, who reported the Chinese company embeds the tracking capability within the in-app browser that opens when someone clicks an external link. Krause noted his research is limited to the Apple iOS platform. Krause did not speculate as to how TikTok is using the capability, but suggests he finds it troubling because it indicates TikTok is able to track users’ online activity if it so chooses. Continue reading Researcher Says TikTok Can Track User Data via Keystrokes