Love it, hate it, but you simply cannot ignore Tik-Tok. It has become a rage between young content creators. Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, had courted controversy when he had criticized Tik-Tok over content censorship. "...on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these same protests are censored, even here in the US," he said while addressing Georgetown University in Washington last month. And now, after that controversial comment, Tik-Tok has decided to prepare to take on Facebook and Instagram.
There are reports that Tik-Tok is preparing to enable their content creators to monetize their content, which Facebook and Instagram has been doing for a while. They are testing a new feature that allows content creators to insert product links to various e-commerce sites on their bio and posts. As per reports, Tik-Tok users will be able to follow these links and directly buy the products mentioned in the videos.
This feature was first spotted by Fabian Bern. According to a video shared by Bern, Tik-Tok users will be able to directly visit and buy from an e-commerce site by simply on clicking the product link given in the post.
BREAKING: TikTok launches 'link in bio' & 'social commerce URLS' in videos @MattNavarra @TaylorLorenz @sarahintampa @TechCrunch @thenextweb @techinasia #tiktok pic.twitter.com/HczzHOHCNf
— Fabian Bern 法比安 (@iamfabianbern) November 14, 2019
But this is not all. He also reported that ByteDance, the owner of TikTok is reportedly in talks with major record labels to launch a music streaming service in the US.
ByteDance. the owner of TikTok is reportedly in talks with major record labels to launch a music streaming service in the US. https://t.co/2oIg0qt7Jl
— Fabian Bern 法比安 (@iamfabianbern) November 18, 2019
And in preparation for Facebook's Libra initiative, earlier this year, Douyin (Chinese version of #TikTok) launched a Credit Card in collaboration with ä¸å›½å…‰å¤§Bank.
Earlier this year, Douyin (Chinese version of #TikTok) launched a Credit Card in collaboration with ä¸å›½å…‰å¤§Bank.
— Fabian Bern 法比安 (@iamfabianbern) November 17, 2019
When will we see one in the West? 🤩 pic.twitter.com/ZUY0JAOaNy
As it is Facebook is taking too much slack with respect to the data privacy scandal. It is yet to be seen if Zuckerberg would be able to get over the Tik-Tok assault. Tik-Tok already has 1.5 billion downloads on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store worldwide, and India retains the top-spot with 66.8 million unique Tik-Tok installations. According to Sensor Tower data, India drove 277.6 million downloads in 2019 so far, which is approximately 45 per cent of the global installs.
