This week, the news echoed in the global financial market that a Brazilian investment manager, IP Capital, had zero investments in Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
It was “because of TikTok”, in the Bloomberg headline, that he quoted the manager’s explanation to clients: “Competition for time has become tougher due to TikTok’s incredible ability to retain attention.” IP sees “universal appeal” and growing in the Chinese platform.
Then the group’s magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, gave numbers to what is happening, under the headline “TikTok turns on the cash machine”. It raised $4 billion in ad revenue in 2021 and is expected to reach $12 billion in 2022.
The projection, by consultancy eMarketer, exceeds the combined revenues of Twitter and Snap. But the biggest shadow is over the advertising duopoly of the platforms of Meta, from Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, from Google and YouTube.
In the case of YouTube, also a video app, eMarketer estimates that TikTok will catch up with it from 2024:
In relation to Meta’s networks, the Chinese has fewer users: 1 billion against 2.9 billion for Facebook and 2 billion for Instagram. But it surpasses both in user time: 29 hours a month, against 16 on Facebook and 8 on Instagram.
Meta’s disastrous first-quarter result was credited to TikTok, Bloomberg notes. And the American would have “hired consultants for political campaigns against the app in the United States, including opinion pieces”.
Echo or not of the campaigns, established outlets have been producing alarmist texts, as is the case with Vox this week, treating TikTok as a risk also for traditional TV and streaming, and for the New York Times itself, the latter with a Cold War bias.
The argument used in the newspaper, to charge American capital for taking over the Chinese platform, is the time the user dedicates to it. “Whoever controls our attention controls our future. Trump was right, and Biden must finish what he started.”
While the pressure has no effect, TikTok is preparing to adopt what its Chinese version, Douyin, debuted two years ago: becoming a complete e-commerce platform, with stores, payment tools, consumer support, in a ” super app”.
JOURNALIST VS. PUBLIC
Pew research shows a wide divergence between the assessment that American journalists make of their own work and that of the public (pictured above).
On “reporting news accurately”, for example, 65% of journalists think their service is good, while only 35% of the American public agrees.
