On October 1st, The Verge, an American technology news website, published the recorded manuscripts of two internal meetings of Facebook in July. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, talked deeply about the difficulties and challenges faced by the company. Notably, in the Q&A session with employees, Zuckerberg mentioned TikTok, a competitor from China. Zuckerberg said that he was developing a product called Lasso to compete with TikTok.
TikTok is the overseas version of ByteDance’s popular short video App Tik Tok. In the past, China’s Internet products were often concentrated in emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, but TikTok successfully swept the mature markets including the United States and Japan.
TikTok IC diagram
The employee’s question is: "Are we worried about the growing cultural influence of TikTok among young people and Generation Z (people born between the mid-1990s and 2000)? What is our blocking plan for this? "
Zuckerberg said, "TikTok has done a very good job. One thing that deserves special attention is that in the past, the picture of the Internet world was that American companies mainly provided various services, while China companies mainly provided similar services in China. For example, Tencent is trying to bring some products to Southeast Asia, and Alibaba is also expanding payment services in Southeast Asia, but overall, this global expansion is very limited. "
"TikTok, founded by ByteDance, is really the first consumer Internet product launched by a China technology giant that can achieve worldwide success. And it began to get good results in America, especially among young people. It has also grown very fast in India, and in terms of scale, Instagram is a thing of the past in India. So this is a very interesting phenomenon. " Zuckerberg said.
"We think so: TikTok is a combination of short, immersive short videos and browsing. Just like the Explore Tab we use on Instagram, this function is mainly about displaying and highlighting different feed posts. TikTok is like exploring a story, which is the whole application. Then there are creators who are committed to creating content. "
Zuckerberg revealed, "Therefore, we have many measures to develop in this area. We are developing an App product called Lasso, hoping to adapt to the markets of Mexico and other countries. This is the earliest one. Next, we will see if it can be launched in countries and regions where TikTok is not particularly influential (referring to Lasso), and then compete with it in countries and regions where TikTok has a large market. "
Comprehensive report by The Paper reporter Chen Yuxi
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