Centricus’s 11th-hour bid adds curiosity to the waiting game on “TikTok”

TikTok, was launched in September 2017.ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for $1 billion and merged it with TikTok,. TikTok is now valued at about $50 billion.

The viral video app is one of China’s biggest technology success stories, scaling up at drastic pace to reach close to 700 million monthly active users as of August 2020. Beyond the Facebook group of apps, Bytedance’s TikTok is the largest social media platform in the world, hence underlining its position in this critical industry.

• TikTok has chosen a bidder for its U.S., New Zealand, and Australian businesses and could announce the deal
• Microsoft, in partnership with Walmart, and Oracle are the highest contenders
• The sale price is expected to be in the range of $20 billion to $30 billion
• Walmart emerged as a surprise contender last week, saying the social media app would augment its e-commerce efforts.

China Govt Says TikTok Needs ‘Licence’ to Sell Its Famed Algorithm to America; New Trade War Begins.

TikTok parent Bytedance has now been instructed that it needs a specific license from the ruling Chinese Communist Party if it wants to sell its app and the underlying technology to an American company.
Now, after reaching close to sale agreements with American technology firms Microsoft or Oracle, TikTok and its parent company Bytedance face a fresh hurdle – this time back in its home turf. The restriction comes in the form of new export rules put in place overnight by China’s ruling Communist Party. The move is being seen by experts as a direct response to the USA’s Donald Trump government’s muscle-flexing against China.

The privacy risk concerns surrounding TikTok stem primarily from three factors:

• TikTok uses unencrypted HTTP instead of HTTPS, making data transfers vulnerable to attack. The company has been accused of illegally storing user data. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the U.S. Justice Department are reportedly now investigating whether the company broke a deal it made with the FTC in February 2019.
• TikTok allegedly sends user data to China. TikTok collects users’ location, Internet address, and browsing history; it can also store phone numbers, age, and payment information if users are opt-in. The company told the Wall Street Journal it collects fewer personal data than U.S. companies like Facebook or Google.

The popular Hacker group Anonymous has mounted a fierce campaign on the social media platforms to ban TikTok globally, saying it’s a malware from the Chinese government that’s spying on its millions of users.

What is your opinion about the future of TikTok?