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Twitter, TikTok Have Held Preliminary Talks About Possible Combination
- galuggus 6y agoI already made it Twiktwok.github.io
- cloudking 6y agoCool idea and implementation. Consider open sourcing?
- galuggus 6y agoI used a library called swiper.js for the heavy lifting. The rest is plain js
- whoevercares 6y agoBrilliant
- jason2323 6y agoAmazing
- jameslk 6y agoThat'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 6y agoGood idea. I could add reddit video next
- searchableguy 6y agoThat's cool - not just the idea but how simple the implementation is.
- galuggus 6y agoI had to remove a lot of features to get it working on safari so thank apple
- k0dede 6y agoReally Cool:>
- rapnie 6y agoReally cool. You could make this a Fediverse app, and add social features using ActivityPub.
- Darmody 6y agoThe most toxic and the dumbest social network merged together. What could go wrong?
- whoevercares 6y agoHow about you make something smarter? You can you up, no can no BB
- ineedasername 6y agoWhat does "You can you up, no can no BB" mean? Is it a phrase from SV culture?
- galuggus 6y agoIt's a popular viral phrase in China.
- whoevercares 6y agohttps://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=you%20can%20you%20up&=true https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=you%20can%20...
- searchableguy 6y ago> Translated from Chinglish. aka If you can do it then you should go up and do it. It's used against people who criticize others' work, especially when the criticizer it not that much better. Often followed by "no can no BB", which means "if you can't do it then don't even criticize it".
- dane-pgp 6y agoFor those still wondering, 'In Pekingese, "BB" apparently means "nag; complain"' according to: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=12358 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=12358
- loktarogar 6y agoThe Vine killers combining with the Vine successors?
- api 6y agoAlong the same lines as "Scientists consider crossing Ebola with Influenza to create the most deadly and most contagious disease ever!"
- tempsy 6y agoWhy doesn't Twitter just resurrect Vine? They literally have all the source code.
- thekyle 6y agoMaybe management don't want to admit to shareholders that they made a horrible mistake.
- babesh 6y agoVine wasn’t designed right. TikTok is much better designed in terms of content surfacing and content creation.
- babesh 6y agoThe potential of short form video was widely recognized at that time. It wasn’t only Vine taking a stab at it. It’s just taken till TikTok to come up with the right formula/execution.
- mantap 6y agoI don't agree with this at all. It was much easier to find good content on vine because vines spread organically. TikTok rewards whoever can appeal to the lowest common denominator.
- babesh 6y agoIf you don’t think that content on TikTok doesn’t spread organically then you must be blind to the follow and share mechanisms.
- someperson 6y agoIt'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-buy-tiktoks-u-s-business-11596418842 https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-aims-for-a-deal-to-bu... [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-results-idUSKBN23O114 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-results-idUSKBN... [5] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-profit.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/tiktok-bytedance-profit.html
- tempsy 6y agomy theory is that their current head of product, who was the founder of Periscope which Twitter bought pre-launch, made the argument for Live Video (his app) over Vine at that time when Live streaming eg Meerkat/Periscope looked to be the "next big thing" in social media (which it never became). Twitter had to choose one video strategy and went with live because of Periscope and it ended up being the wrong decision.
- holler 6y agoHow 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.
- rel2thr 6y agoI 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 6y agoThere are already separate apps for China and non-China users (and android is split across Europe).
- HCDevid 6y agoAlthough there are separate China & non-Chinese apps, you hit the nail on the head for why a potential acquisition both has serious risk and is going to be a fire sale of TikTok given the 45-day deadline. These are issues which normally would take months to resolve at minimum and would also need a period post-close where operations were slowly separated and Bytedance was still involved for knowledge transfer. If the acquirer, can make it work, it will be the greatest tech M&A deal since Facebook acquired Instagram in terms of long-term return.
- justinzollars 6y agoThe 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
- defen 6y agoThere are a lot of people out there who think that the Russians spending a couple hundred thousand dollars on shitty Facebook ads was an intolerable affront to democracy. So I have to imagine there would be a lot of support for not allowing a real geopolitical rival to completely control the next big social media platform.
- magicsmoke 6y agoCapital is only safe in the US if you respect it's economic, technological, and military primacy. Ask Russia or Iran if they would be willing to store their wealth in the US. Iran's on a permanent blacklist for nationalising US economic interests and challenging American military influence in the middle East, and Russia too for daring to use its military on Ukraine in a world where only the US has the prerogative to invade other countries. China's different from those two in that they've been exceptionally careful not to spark a shooting war and to keep enough profits flowing to US companies for the past few decades to keep them placated. But now China's shaking off the leash by building up an indigenous high tech ecosystem that can challenge the US and trying to be the dominant military power in East Asia. Any country that challenges the US can expect its wealth confiscated. Don't expect the current situation to defuse anytime soon. China's goal to be technologically independent eats into the profit margins and future R&D expenditures of US high tech industries, and China's goal to be the military leader of East Asia threatens America's post WW2 influence over Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Both countries want what they believe to be their fair share of the world, but the sum adds up to more than 100%. Both countries also believe they'll be the winner in the end. What better powderkeg could you ask for? Someone will have to give ground at the negotiating table eventually, but that'll only happen when both sides agree on what the actual balance of power between them is and it might take a war to find out.
- tanilama 6y agoI actually prefer Twitter than MSFT After all, they had Vine back then