Smaller social platforms are adding TikTok-like features as TikTok’s future hangs in the balance 

“There are opportunities and there are friction points,” says LTK president Amber Venz Box about a potential TikTok ban. 

As it is, LTK is morphing into a more TikTok-like platform by the day. LTK is now emphasizing video, allowing creators to post more in-depth content about the products they’re hawking such as one very TikTok-ish clip about the differences between polyurethane leather stilettos and actual leather ones. The videos can be up to 10 minutes long and feature links to buy the products shown. 

In recent weeks, social gaming company Roblox has also introduced features that mimic TikTok that push it deeper into shopping, user videos, and creators. It premiered a tool from developer Neura Studios for users to create and edit videos, and a hub for posting TikTok-style clips that feature Roblox avatars (rather than actual humans). Roblox also doubled down on its e-commerce arm with a new Walmart partnership to sell the retailer’s products in Roblox’s metaverse. This could entice Roblox’s 71.5 million daily active users, most of them young, to shop more, potentially also attracting some of TikTok’s users and creators.

Meanwhile, Amazon-owned Twitch, the live-streaming service popular with gamers, in October started letting users post short disappearing videos, or Stories, like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat and TikTok have long offered. It also just launched a scrollable video feed that looks a lot like TikTok’s For You page—showing users videos that they wouldn’t otherwise find.

LTK, Roblox, and Twitch probably would have released their new TikTok-like features regardless of the looming TikTok ban, to be imposed if TikTok’s China-based owner fails to sell the service to a non-China-based buyer. After all, tech companies copy rivals all the time. But the fact that the new products coincide with TikTok’s current turmoil could give them a bigger boost than they would have otherwise got. TikTok has vowed to fight its possible ban in court. 

However, there are some potential downsides to a TikTok-free future in the U.S. along with the benefits, says LTK’s Venz Box. TikTok users often discover creators on TikTok and then later follow them onto LTK. Without that unofficial funnel, Venz Box worries that traffic to LTK may tumble. It’s difficult to know for sure. 

In the end, some analysts, including Jasmine Enberg from eMarketer, suspect Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram (with emphasis on the Meta properties) stand to benefit the most from a TikTok ban. They could both ultimately strengthen their social media duopoly and put even more pressure on the competition.  

As it is, both companies already have billions of users and huge ad revenue that have helped propel their parent companies to $1 trillion-plus market caps. And their deep pockets have allowed them to afford workforces equivalent to the populations of small cities.

But killing off one of social media’s titans wouldn’t exactly be a good thing for consumers, says Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in the global regulation of new technologies.

“As with the demise of any big competitor, there will be harm to consumers,” he says. “I think this is a massive detriment to consumers who don’t have this very important forum for expressing themselves or getting entertainment.”

Chander also says losing TikTok as a marketing platform would eventually increase prices for online ads on Meta and Google. “It will harm advertisers by potentially raising their rates and reducing competition,” he says.

While this may be a long-term consequence, a TikTok ban will be “great” for advertisers over the short term, says Sean Frank, the CEO of accessories brand Ridge. That’s because Meta and Google are more effective than TikTok at driving sales from digital ads, in Frank’s experience, and the ban could send a “flow of users” from TikTok to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. “There’ll be a whole new group of users with a lot of watchtime now falling into a better mousetrap because Meta and Google are the best advertising platforms ever.”

Though Meta would be the obvious winner of a TikTok ban, Frank thinks Snapchat could be a close second. Gen Z are already big Snapchat users and therefore may spend more time on it after a TikTok ban, he says. 

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel certainly wouldn’t complain about a TikTok-free America. Last year, he said he would “love” a TikTok ban, which could help strengthen his company’s lackluster ads business. 

Meanwhile, Meta’s various properties continue to copy TikTok. For example, Instagram just tweaked Reels to show users more videos of topics they’ve already shown an interest in, but from creators they don’t already follow. TikTok has long had a similar feature. In discussing the change, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said he hopes “smaller creators start to see the benefits over the coming months.”

Of course, there is another possibility if TikTok goes away—that people end up spending less time on their phones. “If someone’s not using Twitch today, and they’re a TikTok user, will they just automatically switch to Twitch?” asks Tammy Madsen, a management professor at Santa Clara University who specializes in competitive strategy. “That’s not automatic. These companies existed prior to TikTok, and [some] users were not interested in the platforms.”

More tech news below.

Alexandra Sternlicht

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Today’s edition of Data Sheet was written by David Meyer.

NEWSWORTHY

Apple results. Apple yesterday reported a 10% year-on-year drop in iPhone revenue, but that was roughly what Wall Street expected, and Apple’s announcement of a $110 billion stock buyback led to a 6% stock bump. As Bloomberg reports, mainland China provided a mixed picture, with iPhone unit sales down but revenue up, perhaps due to people buying newer, more expensive models.

Microsoft facial recognition. Microsoft won’t let police departments use generative AI offered through its Azure OpenAI cloud services to perform facial recognition. As TechCrunch notes, this comes shortly after a company called Axon started offering law enforcement a service using OpenAI’s GPT-4 to summarize the audio gathered through body cameras.

Cloudflare fall. Cloudflare’s share price fell by over 13% in after-hours trading, following disappointing revenue projections. Bloomberg reports that this is symptomatic of a general pullback in enterprise IT spending. Cloudflare provides online security services for companies’ websites, as well as a popular content delivery network to help them quickly serve customers around the world.

SIGNIFICANT FIGURES

$26 billion

—The all-cash offer that Sony and private equity firm Apollo just made for Paramount Global. First reported by the Wall Street Journal, the nonbinding offer is made possible by the ending today of an exclusivity period governing takeover negotiations between Paramount and suitor Skydance Media. Apollo previously bid the same amount, but Paramount’s board was skeptical about the financing of that offer.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Top Carta exec David Kim has left the company a few months after the startup quit the secondary share business, by Jessica Mathews

A 2019 email from Microsoft’s CTO to CEO Satya Nadella and Bill Gates shows how spooked the company was by AI rivals Google and OpenAI, by Paolo Confino

Blacklisted Chinese tech giant is covertly funding scientific research at U.S. universities through a nonprofit, by Bloomberg

Companies using AI have nearly doubled—but only to 5.4%, Census Bureau finds, by the Associated Press

Professor who invented tool to mass unfollow people on Meta is preemptively suing because he’s afraid of the platform banning him, by the Associated Press

LinkedIn gets into the games business as the Wordle model spreads, by Chris Morris

BEFORE YOU GO

Apple’s alarming problem. It's not just you. Many iPhone users have been taking to TikTok to complain about their alarms being too quiet or not going off at all. According to the Guardian, it’s not clear how many people are affected, but Apple says it’s working to fix the problem.