Do you remember that Tiktok closed and disappeared from application stores? It wasn’t long ago. For approximately 12 hours on January 19, Tiktok was stripped of approximately 175 million US users only to be stored for a presidential executive order decree that extended the deadline of prohibition in 75 days. Don’t worry; The White House promised that we will have a sale instead by then.
Guess what? While Tiktok has multiple suitors, no American company, and certainly not the White House, has bought any part of the popular Platform of Social Network Content of Bytedonce.
Throughout this process, the Bytedance, a Chinese company, has not yet commented directly on the potential of a sale to an American company. The American leadership of Tiktok and his CEO, Shou Zi Chew, have publicly praised President Donald Trump for his speech, but have been mostly silent since then.
Meanwhile, Tiktok has spent millions on televised ads and infomercial segments that promote Tiktok’s positive impact on US people and companies, specifically small businesses. Currently, the company says it has approximately 7.5 million businesses on the platform. In a recent economic impact report, Tiktok states that small businesses generated $ 15B in income in 2023.
There is no doubt that Tiktok has had a significant impact on the business of the United States and, especially, culture (remembers the fundamental role he played during Covid?). However, the climate and appetite of the United States for a last -hour rescue of the social media platform may have changed since January.
After all, that was the literal dawn of President Trump’s second mandate. Since then, there have been dozens of executive orders that touch almost all parts of American life (including technology; see this order related to AI), and there is the possibility that consumers have bigger fish to fry.
Even so, the fate of one of the most popular social media platforms in the world hangs in balance. This is what we know about what comes next:
I communicated with the White House, Apple, Google and Tiktok about the current state of the negotiations and what could happen if the ban does not obtain another extension. At the time of writing this, only Google responded, but I had nothing new to share.
Although there have been no public indications of any real progress or movement in the process of negotiating the sale of Tiktok, we know that multiple suitors include:
Oracle is already managing Tiktok’s US data, so it could be the main possible buyer.
The White House has often mentioned how to acquire partial participation in the version of the US property company. Here there are already legal obstacles involved with a acting president who also directs a private or non -public business.
Perplexity ai is the most interesting suitor. In a long blog post, the AI search company presented a passionate case to “rebuild Tiktok in the United States.”
While the Bytedonce and the White House are still a mother in details or progress of the agreement, multiple American senators are still urging the White House to extend the postponement of the prohibition to October of this year.
The White House declared this week that an agreement would be made before the deadline of April 5, but has not yet offered more details beyond reiterating that there are “many potential buyers” and have a “tremendous interest.”
What follows?
If the agreement does not occur by then, Tiktok could face a new prohibition, and that could mean the elimination not only of Tiktok but of all American applications by Bytedance, including Lemon8 and the popular Video Capcut application.
Apple and Google eliminated applications, and even after the president of the United States extended the ban, they were not available in application stores for weeks.
Apple did not respond to my request for comments. As I pointed out before, Google told me that I had nothing new to share at this time.
Therefore, the current state of the game is that, although there is a lot of sale of some main actors and commercial investors, there is nothing solid. There are not even leaks of a close agreement. All we have are Trump’s promises and mainly silence of Tiktok and Byteed.
What is reduced is that you cannot buy something that is not for sale. Bytedance has never publicly declared that it is open to a sale. Tiktok in the United States, which has publicly appreciated the extension, may not have control of the situation without a sales agreement of its parent company. Tiktok could be out of options.
With five remaining days, anything could happen, but realistically, it has been almost a year since former President Joe Biden signed the bill that triggered the countdown.
Nothing of material has changed and time is running out.
