Facebook rolling out alternative for TikTok: Facebook recently introduced its new short video feature in their news feed. This was implicated after the ban on TikTok in India with 58 other Chinese applications. India had the biggest market for Tiktok with 200 million users. Bytedance employees around 2000 people in India.
Their career is on the stake of whether the application will be sold or shut down. Facebook also introduced reels on Instagram for Indian users. Reels got a great response on the platform. Lasso another attempt by Facebook inc. to replace TikTok introduced in 2018 was shut down earlier in June. The group of applications also noted a 25% surge in user engagement by Indian users since the ban.
Facebook rolling out alternative for TikTok – A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch “We’re always testing new creative tools so we can learn about how people want to express themselves. Short-form videos are popular and we are looking at new ways to provide this experience for people to connect, create, and share on Facebook.”
Currently Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok for $50 billion from parent company Bytedance. Worldwide Tiktok has been downloaded over two billion times and 165 million in the US. The application has a 3 billion dollar valuation in a year that could compete with giants like Facebook and Google in advertising revenue.
This occurred after US President Donald Trump made a statement to ban the application until mid-September. The deal is allegedly non-exclusive. Hence, Indian giant reliance supported by PM Narendra Modi is also planning to buy stakes in Tiktok for Indian users.
Jio platforms have recently raised around $20 billion by the world’s biggest investors including Google and Facebook. It has over 400 million users in India. Indian origin applications also enjoyed an increased number of users after the ban.
Applications like inmobile’s roposo have 70 million users, sharechat’s moj has around 50 million users, daily Hunt’s josh is on 28 million users, takatak has 33 million users and mitron has 23 million users. Trell and Chingari have a little over 20 million users. YouTube also plans to introduce its version of a short video creation app known as ‘shorts’.
Read More: US GOVERNMENT TO TAKE A CUT IN MICROSOFT TIKTOK DEAL
