In case you haven’t heard, President Trump said he planned to ban TikTok in the United States sometime in September of this year because of the risk of the popular social media app, impeding among American freedoms and security. To counteract the gaping hole that would be left by the fun and transcendent experience of posting short-1 minute clips of drop dead humor, Microsoft offered to jump in and buy TikTok. And then recently just a few days ago, Walmart also entered the competition for America’s most comedic website. Now Walmart and Microsoft are teaming up in attempting to claim the rights to TikTok.
Such a mashup introduces many interesting possibilities of what the potentially merged companies could do. TikTok’s influence is likely to be magnified under Microsoft for a couple of reasons. I believe that one, we can expect many Microsoft computers to come equipped with TikTok already installed. Most importantly for TikTok creators, Microsoft products will likely be highly compatible with TikTok, so that there will be higher quality and quicker processing speed for videos.
There is also the marketing aspect that has to be considered. TikTok can make casually post ads of interest to the audience on their page that come directly from Microsoft and TikTok. TikTok is most heavily used by teens and young adults, and this is potentially transformational for Microsoft most of all. Microsoft, has an older audience base in comparison to someone like Apple. With Microsoft being directly involved with TikTok, the tech giant will always being looming around the minds of younger audiences.
