After Twitter, TikTok is the latest tech giant to dive into text

“At TikTok, we’re always looking to empower our creators and community with innovative tools that inspire self expression,” the company announced in a blog post about, well, words. Text posts will allow creators to “share their stories, poems, recipes, and other written content.” Yes, they will.

Obviously, TikTok is not going for a straight Twitter clone. Just as Meta has put its own, blandly corporate spin on microblogging—or so I hear; I still can’t access Threads here in Germany—TikTok’s Text is just another medium in which to post stuff to the general public, via TikTok’s algorithm. Because the platform revolves around engagement rather than networks of people, don’t expect to see experts chatting among themselves in public.

But just as Meta was able to use Instagram as a springboard for its Threads launch, TikTok also enters this increasingly busy space from a position of enormous strength. As for whether users will engage with the new feature in the long term, well, that’s an open question—Threads’ engagement has certainly plummeted after an energetic start.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that TikTok will early next month launch an e-commerce platform in the U.S., somewhat awkwardly called the TikTok Shop Shopping Center—say that 10 times fast. It’s specifically designed as a way for Chinese manufacturers and merchants to sell into the U.S. and, as the Journal notes, this is a direct challenge to Amazon and its “Sold by Amazon” program.

TikTok is also pushing ahead with TikTok Music, a Spotify rival for which the company acquired the trademark around a year ago. The new service launched this month in five countries: Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and Singapore.

Olivia Moore, a partner at a16z, tweeted an impressive thread on Sunday, suggesting that TikTok Music may be “the first real challenger to Spotify’s global dominance.” Again, TikTok’s preexisting strength is a big plus here, because all those background songs have meant building relationships with music labels, which must come in handy when adding features such as the streaming of viral user-generated remixes.

“I’m interested to see how a potential TikTok Music U.S. launch goes,” Moore wrote. Given that country’s political antipathy towards TikTok, I’d be interested to see if such a launch happens at all. But make no mistake, TikTok is seizing any opportunity it can to challenge its Western rivals.

Separately, check out my colleague Jeremy Kahn’s cover story, which takes an in-depth look at the uncertainty around Google’s ability to adequately meet the A.I. moment.

As Kahn writes: “It remains far from clear that the business model that drives 80% of Google’s revenues—advertising—is the best fit for chatbots and assistants. OpenAI, for example, has chosen a subscription model for its ChatGPT Plus service, charging users $20 per month. Alphabet has many subscription businesses, from YouTube Premium to various features in its Fitbit wearables. But none are anywhere near as lucrative as advertising.”

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David Meyer

NEWSWORTHY

Apple class action. Developers in the U.K. have launched a class-action suit against Apple, claiming that the iPhone firm abused its position by taking an “anticompetitive” 30% cut of in-app sales. As TechCrunch explains, this is an “opt-out” lawsuit that means British iOS developers could get a cut of the damages—the target is up to £800 million ($1.03 billion)—without registering.

Mastodon’s CSAM problem. Some Mastodon networks are rife with child sexual abuse material, according to Stanford researchers. “We got more photoDNA [a picture-matching tool used to find known CSAM imagery] hits in a two-day period than we’ve probably had in the entire history of our organization of doing any kind of social media analysis, and it’s not even close,” researcher David Thiel told the Washington Post. Of course, as a decentralized network of networks, Mastodon itself has less power than the likes of Facebook to take down such images.

Google Chromecast loss. A Texan jury has ordered Google to pay $338.7 million in damages to software developer Touchstream Technologies, for violating its patents rights with Google’s Chromecast video-streaming tech. Reuters reports that the infringing devices include the Chromecast dongle itself, as well as Google’s Home and Nest devices, and third-party TVs with Chromecast built-in.

ON OUR FEED

“Simply put, X’s runway is coming to an end.”

—Forrester research director Mike Proulx on why he thinks the platform formerly known as Twitter will “shutter or be acquired within the next 12 months.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Alphabet boss Sundar Pichai is about to give the most important business update since he became CEO of the Google search empire, by Stephen Pastis

San Francisco police interrupted the dismantling of the iconic Twitter sign but concluded that ‘no crime was committed’, by Kylie Robison

X boss Linda Yaccarino issues rallying cry to rebranded Twitter employees: ‘Please don’t take this moment for granted. You’re writing history’, by Chloe Taylor

‘Completely irrational’: By changing Twitter’s name, Elon Musk is wiping out $4 billion to $20 billion in brand value, by Bloomberg

You can see the big problem with A.I. when you use Alexa, say concerned Harvard professors. Just ask if Amazon is a monopoly, by Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders

Why AT&T and Verizon’s infrastructure woes run much deeper than lead cables, by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian

BEFORE YOU GO

Sending Signal. Wired has a timely piece on Signal, the secure messaging app, and its anarchist founder Moxie Marlinspike (obviously not his birth name, but glorious nonetheless). Although the article praises Signal for the communications privacy it enables, it also warns of trouble ahead for this "temporary autonomous zone that Marlinspike has spent almost a decade building." And which he has just left.

Money is the issue, as always. The nonprofit needs donations, but to get enough, it needs to scale to a degree that it probably can't do safely. But even if it doesn't survive, Signal's influence—and its core protocol—have already extended its mission to more popular rivals such as WhatsApp.