Microsoft isn't the only suitor interested in buying TikTok. According to The Wall Street Journal, Twitter has held “preliminary talks” about purchasing TikTok’s US business.
Twitter reportedly believes it would receive less antitrust scrutiny, in comparison to Microsoft. However, TikTok’s US business is projected to be worth tens of billions of dollars, while Twitter’s entire market capitalisation is about $29 billion. It also lost more than $1.2 billion in its latest quarter.
So, Twitter would need serious investors in order to buy TikTok.
TikTok is used to create and share videos. There are similar apps that came before it, like Vine and Dubsmash. It also had a predecessor, called Musical.ly, which Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang launched in 2014. ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and folded the service and its userbase into TikTok. It now has over one billion global monthly active users, and ByteDance is considered one of the world’s most valuable startups.
ByteDance maintains that US user data is stored in the US. Still, President Donald Trump ordered it to sell its US operations to avoid a ban.
If you're a TikTok user excited about the possibility of Twitter purchasing the app, just remember it has until 15 September, which isn't a lot of time. Also, consider some of Twitter's past, high-profile acquisitions, including Vine and Periscope. They were both explosively popular - until they were acquired by Twitter.