Twitter is in Talks with TikTok for Potential Merger

Twitter Inc has held early talks about a potential combination with TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing app. It is unclear whether Twitter will pursue a deal, which would involve TikTok’s US operations. This is because Twitter is much smaller, the San Francisco-based social media company has reasoned it probably wouldn’t face the same level of antitrust scrutiny as Microsoft Corp or other potential bidders. Microsoft has been negotiating for weeks with ByteDance Ltd., the parent company of TikTok and is considered the front-runner for any possible deal. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella spoke with President Donald Trump about the matter a week ago.

Twitter’s market capitalization is about $29 billion, smaller than Microsoft’s at more than $1.6 trillion and it would almost certainly need help from other investors if it does buy TikTok. The company’s CEO Jack Dorsey has had a failed attempt at short-form video. It shut down the Vine app in 2016, four years after acquiring it, as part of an effort to cut costs. The company has recently been under attack by President Trump, who said that Twitter and Facebook Inc. are unfairly censoring him. Both platforms blocked a video shared by accounts linked to Trump for violating their policies on coronavirus misinformation.

Microsoft has been negotiating for weeks with ByteDance Ltd., the parent company of TikTok and is considered the front-runner for any possible deal

TikTok plans to file a federal lawsuit to challenge President Trump's executive order banning the video sharing service from the US as unconstitutional. TikTok responded to the ban in a blog post, saying it was shocked and would pursue all remedies available.

TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based Internet technology company founded by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short music, lip-sync, dance, comedy and talent videos of 3 to 15 seconds, and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. ByteDance first launched Douyin for the Chinese market in September 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets outside of mainland China; however, it only became available worldwide, including the United States, after merging with Musical.ly.

Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as ‘tweets’. Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface, through Short Message Service (SMS) or its mobile-device application software. Twitter, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California, and has more than 25 offices around the world.