Mark Zuckerberg responds to the growing threat from TikTok & Elizabeth Warren

In a series of leaked recordings from Facebook's internal meetings, Mark Zuckerberg talks about the competitive threat from TikTok.

According to reports, Zuckerberg mentions, “I think the geopolitical implications of what TikTok is doing, is quite interesting. I think we have time to learn and understand and get ahead of the trend".

He says TikTok is doing well globally and acknowledges it's growing popularity in India, where it seems to have surpassed Instagram.

He adds TikTok has "married short-form, immersive video with browse. So it’s almost like the ‘Explore Tab’ that we have on Instagram, which is today primarily about feed posts and highlighting different feed posts".

Facebook has also made several attempts to duplicate a similar mechanism and launch it through their network. In November 2018, Facebook launched a short-format video standalone app called 'Lasso', a mock-up of TikTok, for Android and iOS available only in the US during its first phase of the rollout.

The app failed to take off and create a buzz that's similar or even close to TikTok. It was pretty clear by now that an in-built feature in any of the already established apps would be a better way to counter TikTok's success, rather than launching a standalone.

Which may be the reason why Instagram was found testing a feature reportedly being called 'Clips'. Clips, lets you record a short-video by selecting the length of the video & it’s speed, lets you overlay music and shows a countdown before it starts recording.

Also Read: Facebook to start hiding like counts

The full-scale roll-out of this feature has not been announced yet. Facebook's yet another persistent pursuit is IGTV. Constant efforts to push IGTV, such as previews of IGTV videos as posts, Stories and in the Explore tab continue with the latest addition of an option to cross-post IGTV videos to Facebook.

Recently, Instagram also made 'Branded Content' or 'Paid Partnership' tag available to boost brand collaborations on IGTV.

In the leaked recordings, which Mark Zuckerberg confirmed to be legit, he also discusses the scenario if the presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren gets elected and the threat she poses.

Elizabeth Warren has previously suggested ideas to 'break up big tech companies' such as Facebook and Google. She believes such companies hold too much power and have monopolized the system.

Zuckerberg mentions if any of such plans come to action, they would have to fight, even if it's against the government.

Elizabeth responded with a series of tweets - #BreakUpBigTech. She continued to suggest her idea and the reasons behind it, such as the company using our private information for profit, undermining democracy and more.

According to her plan, we would still be able to use the Facebook family of apps but they would have to compete against each other to make better products and outdo each other to protect our privacy.