Three years after TikTok was banned in India, the Bytedance-owned social media app has given pink slips to its entire staff in the country. According to a report by The Economic Times, severance pay of nine months would be given to the 40 employees. The TikTok employees who worked out of the India office, managed Brazil and Dubai markets. The Indian government banned the TikTok application, along with 300 other Chinese apps in June 2020 citing national security concerns. TikTok had the second largest user base in India.
As per a report by AFP, TikTok, whose parent company ByteDance is Chinese, is fighting for its survival in the United States too with rising calls from mainly Republican lawmakers that the company should be outright banned for its links to Beijing. 138 million users in America use TikTok on a regular basis, and on an average spend about 90 minutes a day.
As the competition and tension around TikTok intensifies, other tech giants are making quick moves to capture the short-form video market. For instance, YouTube, the Google-owned streaming service recently said that it would introduce advertising on its video feature Shorts and give creators 45% of the revenue. That compares with its standard distribution of 55% for videos outside of Shorts, and TikTok’s $1 billion fund for paying creators.
TikTok’s popularity especially in the U.S. has taken away Meta’s market share in the social media space too. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is now looking at ways to catch up. In 2022, Meta built monetization tools to attract creators, especially TikTokers. From creator funds, exclusive content options and greater ad revenue percentages than its competitors, among other incentives Meta has is going aggressive to attract influencers. According to a recent WSJ report, Meta is paying BuzzFeed millions to generate creator content for Facebook and Instagram. This is a year-long partnership, between digital publisher and social-media giant, stated the report.