Twitter is in preliminary discussions for a possible combination with TikTok, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday after US President Donald Trump said he would ban the app, calling it a threat to national security.
Trump declared Thursday that the popular Chinese video application TikTok and the social network WeChat “threaten the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.”
In an executive order, Trump gave Americans 45 days to stop doing business with the platforms, effectively setting a deadline for the sale of TikTok by its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
He has also demanded that a significant portion of the sale go to the US Treasury.
Microsoft has been the main suitor for TikTok and said it was in talks to buy the company’s operations in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The Financial Times reported Thursday that Microsoft has expanded negotiations and was now seeking all global operations of the app.
As a smaller company, Twitter would have a remote offering for TikTok, but the social media platform believes it would be under less antitrust scrutiny than larger corporations like Microsoft, the WSJ said, citing people familiar with the conversations.
Twitter, however, would likely need the support of other investors to complete the combination.
While Twitter allows video sharing, most posts contain short text messages and photos or GIFs.
In 2012, Twitter acquired the Vine platform, which allowed users to share short videos, but closed the service in 2016.
[AFP]
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