So tell me, Guru: can I keep using TikTok or what?
ALook, you carry on as you were. TikTok may or may not end up ousted from app stores for various political reasons that are outside of Guru’s remit, but that’s a general issue with platform fragility, and it’s not really your problem until it is. Everything seems to die eventually, and you shouldn’t let anyone convince you we’re not still living in a bubble. Particularly Guru’s sickly and silver-tongued nephew Bubous, who cannot be let out of his, lest we all get the plague.
And hey, don’t overlook the impact of internet sheep syndrome, whereby every major outlet decides they need to pivot in the same direction at once because that’s what everyone else is doing. GaGu, given that he is from ye olden days, remembers the first big bout of ISS. Text was king on Facebook in the brief window when Facebook was cool, until word came down the pipe that video was the new thing.
Everyone moved to video, though they were not entirely sure why. Then Instagram blew up, numerous Insta-like platforms popped up, and companies jumped there as the business model started to coalesce.
Now TikTok is absolutely huge, businesses are heading there, and every other platform is once again leaping to attract them. Not only is YouTube ruining its core experience with Shorts, not only is Instagram attempting to prioritise video posts over the images that made its billions, but even platforms like Spotify are needlessly hawking vertical video. Essentially, if it’s TikTok you want, it’s TikTok you’ll get – no matter where you bloody look.
The question is not necessarily what TikTok is up to, it’s whether it’s making enough to survive, particularly if deplatforming kills its revenue stream at a time when so many others are diluting its core function.