Ban TikTok, Bring Back Vine 💡
Do you remember Vine?
Its 6-second looping videos were the first cult success for mobile device video. It launched the careers for a number of social media stars.
After getting acquired for $30 million in 2012 by Twitter, it was strangled by executive turnover, failure to monetize, and steep competition.
Now, the door is open for a return.
Is TikTok a national security threat?
TikTok collects an ungodly amount of data of any phone on which it is downloaded. Someone on Reddit reverse-engineered the app and found it collects more than any other major app.
Sure, Facebook and Google are collecting a lot of data on people, but, they’re incentivized to sell you a standing desk or a new bathing suit.
While they have collaborated with law enforcement on past cases, they have a legal basis for refusing to hand over data from their users.
Bytedance, the company that owns TikTok, is based in China. A 2017 law mandates Chinese companies to comply with government intelligence operations if asked. There is a long track record of the Chinese Communist party interfering with international digital media to neuter political speech.
The Chinese Great Firewall has existed since 1997, but recently the exporting of political censorship has expanded as TikTok’s userbase grew by the millions outside of the country.
In late 2019, the US military banned TikTok from being downloaded to government-issued phones.
In June, India banned TikTok, and 58 other apps developed in China, from use in India.
200 million Indian citizens used the app regularly. Now, Indian developers are racing to fill the yawning gap left in their App store.
This past week, Wells Fargo instructed its 250,000 employees to remove it from mobile phones with business email.
US views of China are at multi-decade lows and Trump desperately needs to pull something before the election. I’m convinced it’s a matter of when, not if, the US government bans the app, too.
Will something fill its place?
Facebook is betting big that Reels (which copies many TikTok features) will rise to meet the gap in the US market. They successfully copied Snapchat’s stories five years ago and drastically reduced the company’s growth.
Can they do it again?
Vine, and the executive team at Twitter, might be the only thing standing in their way.
Every single VC in Silicon Valley will tell you the importance of network effects for creating significant enterprise value. Social networks become exponentially more valuable as more nodes are added to the network.
Pre-existing networks, like Twitter and Facebook, already have a user’s social graph (their arrangement of friends and follows) to inform how to make connections in a new product.
When we evaluate the landscape of possible TikTok replacements, we have to assume that the social graph and the base of users is a much more difficult feature to replicate than the product design and functionality of the app.
Considering the scale and caliber of both firm’s engineering departments, they’re in pole position to replicate those features the fastest.
They’ve got to move fast, or their lead will evaporate.
Byte is a new app that was designed and built by the original founders of Vine. Lots of initial media coverage for the app cited Vine’s legacy as a reason to give the app a shot.
Vine’s window to call on its brand equity is nearly gone.
Jack Dorsey needs to step up and make a bold move.
He’s dealing with an activist hedge fund trying to oust him. Elliot Management is looking for a return on its significant equity stake.
Imagine how these crazy markets would react if Jack announced he was resuscitating Vine to fill the void left by TikTok.
Unfortunately, this is the high-risk, high-reward a founder can only make if they’ve got the full trust of their team or are early enough in the game where they’ve got nothing to lose.
Twitter execs have been peeved that he’s splitting his time between the social network and Square (the other company he cofounded that makes up 85% of his net worth).
The developer costs and reputational risk are probably too great for Jack. He’s played his odds very carefully and is one of the few remaining tech oligarchs still in power.
The opportunity of short-form social video in the world’s largest market will likely be realized by someone else.
P.S. - Cody Ko was my favorite Viner. What about you?
