In leaked audio from an internal meeting held with employees in July 2019, Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), said it is just like an explore Tab on Instagram when describing the Tik Tok. He possibly misunderstood the impact of Tik Tok, and his talk casts a dark shadow on the future of Facebook Apps.
A selfie and something pretty on Instagram
Instagram allows posting a selfie and show around something cute. On the other hand, the story of Tik Tok is entirely different. It is a storyboarded and premeditated and separate from the haphazard stories posted on Instagram. Tik Tok is an innovative form of social entertainment.
Installation of Lasso – 425,000 times
On the sad note, the installation of Lasso is just 425,000 times since its launch on November 2018. Tik Tok has seen 640 million installations since November 2019, outside of China. To date, the installations of Tik Tok are estimated at 1.4 billion, excluding installations in China.
The gross misunderstanding of Tik Tok by the CEO of Facebook is alarming. He feels that it is another Snapchat story to get destroyed easily. If he fails to recognize the rise of Tik Tok, he will miss out on a core social feed that is important for his business.
What does Zuckerberg think about Tik Tok?
During a private Q&A session about the Tik Tok, Zuckerberg said Tik Tok is performing well. When talking about Tik Tok, he said, a bunch of American companies dominate the internet landscape. Several Chinese companies are limited to offering services in the domestic market. See, companies like Alibaba and Tencent are trying to populate their services in Southeast Asia. The Chinese company’s operations are limited when it comes to global expansion. It is the same story for ByteDance built – Tik Tok. The popularity of Tik Tok is growing mainly among younger people. It also received wide acceptance in the US. Tik Tok is growing faster in terms of scale in India and surpassed Instagram.
The valuation of video-sharing app Tik Tok’s parent ByteDance is $75 billion. Zuckerberg knows the rise of Tik Tok in critical global markets. He plans to address this issue with Lasso, a standalone clone, by first trying in Mexico.