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Recently, a leaked audio of an internal Facebook meeting was exposed by The Verge.

According to the audio content, Facebook began to realize the rise of Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin, and Zuckerberg began planning to prevent the global development of its latest competitor, Tik Tok, the overseas version of Douyin.

Zuckerberg said: Facebook's TikTok-like app Lasso will be verified in the Mexican market where Tik Tok has not yet entered, and will only then compete in other markets where Tik Tok is already popular.

There is a reason why Facebook started listing Tik Tok as a competitor.

In recent years, although products from WeChat, Alipay to Eggplant Quick Transfer, Cheetah Mobile and others are all aggressively attacking overseas markets, companies such as Kuaishou and YY are growing rapidly in the South American market.

But at present, the overseas version of TikTok is considered to be a relatively successful project of China's Internet going overseas. In the United States, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and other Asian countries, the download ranking of TikTok short videos is gradually catching up with Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

In the Indian market, platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are facing fierce competition from Tik Tok. Tik Tok has 200 million users in India; by comparison, Facebook currently has 300 million users in India - but Tik Tok has surpassed Facebook in terms of downloads.

India's Economic Times cited data from Sensor Tower, a world-renowned third-party data monitoring company, saying that Tik Tok's global downloads in the first quarter were 188 million, of which India accounted for 47%; Facebook ranked second with 176 million, of which India accounted for 21%.

At present, the countries where Tik Tok is focusing its development are the United States, Japan, and India.

Tik Tok and Facebook will face a fierce battle for users in the Indian market, which has high growth potential, and the US domestic market. In the United States, TikTok has surpassed Snapchat in the photo and video app download rankings, and is catching up in Europe.

1. Why has TikTok aroused the vigilance and resistance of social giants both at home and abroad?

There is a reason why TikTok has aroused the vigilance and resistance of social giants both at home and abroad.

For social products, the platform value experience lies in two aspects:

1. A stable social relationship chain built by a sufficiently large user base;
2. The length of time users spend on the platform every day are two important indicators of the value of a social platform. In China, since WeChat is not only related to users' social relationship chains, but also connects users' food, clothing, housing, transportation, and entertainment content consumption through WeChat payment, financial management, mini-programs, games, e-commerce, food delivery, and official account content ecology, the public is highly dependent on the WeChat social ecology. Short video products such as TikTok mainly compete for user time, and cannot shake the social foundation of products like WeChat for the time being.

But in foreign countries, although Facebook firmly holds the top spot in the social networking field, Facebook has higher tool attributes as a social product.

In addition to social networking, it does not deeply bind and cultivate users' needs and habits in terms of food, clothing, housing, transportation, consumption, entertainment, etc. on the platform. Its ecological foundation and stability are not as good as WeChat.

In addition, considering that the social ecology of netizens abroad is more open and diversified, and short videos, as a globally used social language, have the extension attribute of viral popularity, it affects a wider range of users and has higher user acceptance, and it may also have a certain impact on the cultivation and migration of social relationships abroad.

According to the data, Tik Tok currently covers 150 countries and regions, covering 75 languages, and its global monthly active users have exceeded 700 million in just one year. Data from Sensor Tower, an international app market research organization, shows that in September this year, Tik Tok has repeatedly occupied the top three positions in the US Apple App Store.

In addition, most importantly, from the perspective of profit model, as Tik Tok grows, it will grab the advertising pie that originally belonged to Facebook.

Because whether it is Snapchat, Twitter, or Facebook, they are all social giants and are essentially media giants. Tik Tok is essentially a short video content media. The media's main profit model is advertising. Its growth in overseas markets, like Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook, is competing for advertisers' budgets.

This cannot but worry Facebook. Even SnapChat, which was once engaged in a secret war with Facebook, has sensed new risks. SnapChat first listed Tik Tok as a competitor in regulatory filings in February this year.

Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat were all competitors in the past, but now they have all listed Tik Tok as a competitor. Because they have all realized that the risks posed by Tik Tok are far greater than the crises they bring to each other.

As Prabhu Ram, head of industry intelligence at India's CyberMedia Research (CMR), said, the rise of apps like Tik Tok highlights users' underlying fatigue with established social media and their eagerness to express themselves through new apps and platforms.

2. Can Facebook stop the expansion of TikTok?

Based on past experience, Facebook has two ways to deal with competitors: one is acquisition. Whether it is the acquisition of WhatApps or Instagram, Facebook is further expanding the relationship chain and seizing more time points of contact with users, cultivating new users, and making the connection between people deeper and broader.

But judging from ByteDance’s ambition, its purpose of expanding overseas is not to become a Facebook employee, but to snatch food from the tiger’s mouth.

Obviously, Facebook is well aware of Tik Tok's ambitions, and its current strategy is to copy the entire platform - copy your model, gameplay and product features, and then use my resources and social user base to divert traffic and influence to promote it, and quickly overtake it.

In the past, Facebook's Instagram used a copycat approach to curb Snapchat and Google+, and now Facebook is using this approach again. Judging from Facebook's actions, first, it has released many small applications with Tik Tok functions; second, it has focused on promoting the short video social application Lasso, which is almost identical to Tik Tok.

Tik Tok is not without hidden dangers under the counterattack of giants like Facebook.

Because, on the one hand, Toutiao's growth in overseas markets relies on traffic from established social platforms such as Facebook and YouTube; on the other hand, a major hidden danger of Tik Tok is the supervision of governments in other countries and regions in the world. For example, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed a heavy fine of $5.7 million on the international version of TikTok for illegally collecting the names, email addresses and addresses of minors under the age of 13; markets including Indonesia and Thailand have also strengthened supervision due to Tik Tok's "negative content."

I think there is a certain possibility that Facebook can defeat Tik Tok, but the difficulty will be much greater than its past efforts to block products such as Snapchat and Google+.

Why?

I think there are several points.

1) Judging from the trend, Tik ToK is currently more popular than Facebook and Instagram in many regions; and the first-mover advantage of short video products can easily capture the minds of users quickly. Once it becomes viral in a single market, it is likely to quickly form a user scale effect. This is also why Facebook wants to go to the blank market that Tik ToK has not entered to verify market demand first.

2) Toutiao has operating experience in the Chinese market. The development level of China's mobile Internet is actually ahead of many other countries' markets. Tik ToK is actually a high-dimensional attack on a low-dimensional one, which also caters to Masayoshi Son's time machine theory.

3) Snapchat and Google+ are actually social tool products that are easy to copy and can quickly and massively import users by relying on Facebook’s own social relationship chain. But short videos are a brand new video content product, and they are a brand new algorithm recommendation mechanism. Popular video applications are very attractive to the younger generation. When it comes to expressing themselves through video platforms, users in overseas markets are as open and accepting as young people in China. Tik Tok's popularity also lies in the fact that it provides users with a space of their own to meet this need. For example, when GWI asked Tik Tok users about their main reason for using the internet, most said they wanted to make their voices heard and influence others.

This is also why Google is unwilling to fail in social networking and seems to want to make a comeback in the field of short videos. According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, Google is interested in purchasing Tik Tok competitor Firework.

Although Facebook can also achieve functions similar to Tik Tok, its understanding of short videos is difficult to reach the level of ByteDance.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's comment on Tik Tok is:

“It’s almost identical to our Explore tab on Instagram, and I feel like Tik Tok is like Explore Stories.”

We know that the Instagram "Explore" tab displays a series of topic channels that display related content under related topics, providing users with a new way to discover updated content on Instagram, which is equivalent to a user's personalized video content channel.

However, from Zuckerberg's understanding, Tik Tok is a personalized video channel for users, but this perception has certain limitations.

On Instagram, users mostly show their lives through selfies and other forms. It is actually a video-based social dynamic display platform that mainly shows what users are doing.

However, Tik Tok is actually a new mode of entertainment content consumption and a new type of social entertainment. It is not just about showing yourself, but more about creating stories, new trends, new ideas and concepts, etc. It is not about showing users you or what you are doing, but about how to entertain your audience and create hits. It is a combination of "video media + entertainment lifestyle".

We will find that Facebook seems to understand Tik Tok more as something similar to vlog (video blog).

To some extent, Facebook’s dilemma in short videos may be similar to that of some domestic challengers of TikTok.

In the Indian market, Facebook is currently learning from Tik Tok to work with top Indian brands to license their music for creative content such as videos on Facebook and Instagram. However, since short videos are not part of Facebook's native genes, it is difficult for it to accurately cater to and match consumers' preferences in its content recommendation and screening mechanisms.

What needs to be noted is that Lasso, owned by Facebook, is not successful at present. Data shows that Facebook's short video application Lasso has only been installed 425,000 times since its launch in November last year, while Tik Tok has been installed 640 million times outside of China during the same period. So far, Tik Tok has been installed a total of 1.4 billion times outside of China.

Tik Tok currently attracts a large number of young users with its "User Generated Content". The short video social model fits the trend of mobile Internet and consumers' desire to express themselves - in the West, the demand for video performances may be far greater than in China.

3. Tik Tok’s hidden worries: policy supervision and counterattack by giants

Tik Tok’s hidden worries: on the one hand, there is the counterattack of giants; on the other hand, there is policy supervision.

According to earlier data from Business Weekly, Tik Tok has deleted more than 6 million videos in India that violated its user agreement and community guidelines. Tik Tok employs nearly 500 people in India and will continue to expand its team in the future. For example, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) once imposed a heavy fine of $5.7 million on Tik Tok because the latter illegally collected the names, email addresses and addresses of minors under the age of 13.

in the country, whether at the policy and regulatory level or in user psychology, the sensitivity to privacy is not as high as in foreign countries. There is a certain sensitivity to privacy clauses and data transfer, both in India and in Western countries.

Companies such as Facebook and Google have all stumbled over privacy issues in the past. In the European Union, the personal privacy protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has been officially implemented. They need to make clear and comprehensive explanations on what data will be collected, how the data will be used, and with whom the data will be shared.

When domestic Internet companies expand overseas, they often follow the rough and tumble approach used by domestic companies, which can easily violate the bottom line of privacy.

The two payment giants, WeChat and Alipay, have also stumbled due to privacy issues. Someone in the payment industry who is familiar with overseas markets once said: Some Chinese payment companies that go abroad will encounter "local incompatibility" and be rejected by users in Japan and Europe, mainly because they record user behavior trajectories, which is taboo for countries that attach great importance to privacy protection.

How to avoid touching upon overseas policies and users' standard consensus on Internet privacy is the hidden danger of Tik Tok.

How to have a clear understanding of the policies and national conditions of various countries overseas and make timely responses is one of Tik Tok's difficulties and challenges.

It can be seen that as Tik Tok continues to advance rapidly, it will encounter more and more competitors, and the encirclement and investment from giants will become greater and greater. Especially with the impact of Tik Tok on YouTube, more and more video publishers have moved to the overseas version of Douyin, and Google cannot stay out of it. Google now hopes to fight against Douyin by acquiring Firework.

However, Facebook and others can rely on their social ecosystem advantages to eliminate similar social products, but they cannot fight against the trend. It will not be another Tik Tok that defeats Tik Tok.

With the collective containment of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other platforms, will Tik Tok's growth engine be stalled?

It's hard to say.

At present, Tik Tok needs to deal with the possibility of collective bans and behind-the-scenes suppression by platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google Youtube.

Signs of tightening overseas regulation and counterattacks by giants are hidden dangers for Toutiao's overseas expansion of short videos.

Ultimately, Tik Tok's growth overseas is related to the fact that it did not attract the attention of giants in the beginning.

Its early strategy was similar to that of domestic ones. It sought to expand the content ecosystem and did not promote the introduction of social relationship chains. This meant that it grew in a low-key manner in areas not covered by Facebook and did not attack Facebook's core social territory. This effectively allowed Tik Tok to avoid Facebook's attention when it was in its infancy; but by the time Facebook woke up, Tik Tok had already grown bigger.

The current vigilance of Facebook and a number of Silicon Valley giants is not good news for it, especially since Tik Tok’s foundation is not stable and its retention rate is not high.

According to previous media reports: Tik Tok's 30-day user retention rate in the United States is about 10%, while in India this proportion exceeds 30%. Despite this, its retention rate remains low.

In addition, in the past, Tik Tok needed to rely on the traffic from giant platforms such as Facebook and Google to achieve growth overseas. However, in the future, as giants such as Facebook and Google become competitors, Tik Tok's growth model may be hindered. Therefore, it is a bit too early to talk about the success of Tik Tok now. The second half of the battle between Tik Tok and Facebook remains to be seen.

Author: Silk Road Academy

Source: Silk Road Academy