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Entering 2022, Facebook's life is getting worse and worse, but its attention is not less. Recently, it quietly opened an account on its biggest competitor, TikTok, and in just a few days, without promotion, it has accumulated 466,000 fans. You know, there is currently no content under the account.
What is Facebook going to do? A lot of people are speculating. To observe competitors? To pull ads? Or is it to catch young users?
Originally, TikTok, the world's most downloaded social media platform, it was not surprising to open an account on it, but the problem is that this is Facebook that regards TikTok as a "thorn in the eye and a thorn in the flesh". It's as if the old boss was overtaken by the rising star, unable to suppress it, and unable to catch up. Suddenly, one day, I ran to the rookie's house as a guest, attracting a wave of people watching the hilarity.
What kind of medicine is sold in Zuckerberg's gourd?
The easiest to grow powder
Open the Facebook account page and you can say "nothing". No content postings, no following accounts, a growing number of followers, and a link to the Facebook app that led to Google Play. If it is not a pure big V authentication with a blue hook on the username, it is really doubtful, is this a fake number?
But the biggest piece of information, and what's also intriguing, is its account profile — we believe people can do more together, than alone.
Is Facebook going into the future with TikTok?
Source: Facebook's TikTok account homepage
Soon after, a spokesperson for Facebook's parent company, Meta, responded vaguely, saying, "Brands use a variety of channels, including social media platforms, to engage and interact with people who use their products and services." Our intention to build a brand image on TikTok is no different than to nurture a community. "
As for its specific plans for TikTok accounts, for example, what kind of content will be released, and whether it will run ads, it has not leaked half a point.
After all these days, the Facebook account has not moved. Many people may be looking at what Facebook really wants to do, after all, everyone knows that Zuckerberg regards TikTok as the biggest threat.
And Facebook isn't the only Meta account on TikTok yet. Prior to that, Instagram had just launched an Instagram Creators account.
Last month, Facebook's parent company Meta officially launched the short video application Reels to the world, directly benchmarking TikTok, and even complained that it was the plagiarist of the latter.
At the same time, Facebook is losing its appeal to users. Its last quarterly report data shows that its monthly active users have stopped growing, and the number of daily active users has declined for the first time. Zuckerberg reiterated TikTok's influence in a conference call, "TikTok is a formidable competitor and growing at a fairly fast pace." "
So, is Facebook making this move to use TikTok to enrich its Gen Z user base? Perhaps until Facebook makes a move, the fog will obscure its true intentions.
Ignoring, imitating, suppressing, catching up
Founded in 2004, Facebook was the world's leading photo-sharing site. In 2012, it acquired Instagram, and in 2014, WhatsApp was also included in its pocket, becoming a social giant. Although Facebook has considerable market resources, in recent years, the growth of users has basically concentrated in the middle-aged and elderly groups, and it is unable to do so in the young group market.
At the same time, in 2017, ByteDance knocked on the door of the US market, successively acquiring Musical.ly and Flickagram, a well-known short video application in North America. As soon as TikTok was launched, it attracted audiences at all levels, thus opening up the overseas development model of "riding the wind and waves".
But in fact, when TikTok first entered the social market, no one cared too much, and Zuckerberg also despised it. In a leaked recording a few years ago, Zuckerberg compared TikTok to Instagram's Explorer hashtag, meaning that TikTok wouldn't pose a threat to any of its platforms.
But seeing TikTok rise, it can be said that it is popular in the United States, especially among the most energetic teenagers. It's impossible for Facebook to ignore it. So Facebook sacrificed its usual trick - to launch competitors, which is to put it bluntly, imitation. This was how it successfully coped with snapchat's rise before.
In November 2018, Facebook launched a short video application - Lasso, which is very similar to TikTok in terms of design and content, and is even called "the cottage version of TikTok" by the US media, but the download volume in the same period is far less than that of TikTok, and finally ended in the public opinion.
Ryan Hoover, a venture capitalist and founder of Product Hunt, said that once users learn that Lasso is a Product of Facebook, they associate it with the more ancient community and culture on the platform and reject it. He added: "TikTok doesn't have as much baggage as Facebook, and for teenagers, that's the biggest attraction." ”
Shortly thereafter, Facebook launched the short video app Instagram Reels in more than 50 countries around the world, challenging TikTok again, but it has also been tepid.
TikTok's voice is getting louder and louder, but Facebook is frustrated on the road to short video development, and Facebook can't hold its breath. COO Sheryl Sandberg has said publicly that TikTok is Facebook's biggest threat.
The imitation failed, and Facebook began to frequently smear TikTok in public, saying that it endangered the country's data security. The U.S. government began a strict review of TikTok, which was once about to be forced out of the U.S. market.
Kevin Mayer, then CEO of TikTok, accused Facebook of using patriotism as a cover to try to drive TikTok out of the market in an unfair way. He said in an article: "We welcome competition, and fair competition makes us all better." But let's focus our efforts on fair, open competition for our consumers, not on the defamatory attacks of rival Facebook. ”
Mayer's remarks come as Zuckerberg is about to attend an antitrust hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (HRJC). At the hearing, Zuckerberg tried to play up the "danger" of Chinese tech companies dominating the cyber space. At the same time, he also took the opportunity to point the spearhead directly at TikTok.
Just when TikTok might be banned in the United States, Meta's (then called Facebook) Instagram "took advantage of the fire" and used heavy money to poach TikTok users to its social platforms. Sources say Facebook pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to the most popular creators on TikTok.
But in the end, TikTok's parent company ByteDance filed a paper complaint against the U.S. government, and TikTok survived tenaciously and continued to lead the us social media trend. According to official data, TikTok reached 1 billion monthly active users worldwide in September 2021. In 2021, it will become the world's largest mobile app download.
Facebook is not idle. According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta has stepped up its pursuit of TikTok, and on February 22, 2022, Facebook launched a short video product Reels for all users around the world, and launched many new features for advertisers. Zuckerberg announced on a previous earnings call that more and more users are spending time on Reels, which has become Meta's fastest-growing form of content to date.
Is Facebook losing the competition with TikTok?
Reels may be the only action Zuckerberg can do to give the outside world confidence in the process of competing with TikTok.
All kinds of data prove that in the competition against TikTok, Meta is losing its main position advantage. Meta's fourth quarter 2021 earnings report shows that Facebook's daily active users fell for the first time in 18 years. Facebook's global daily active users were 1.93 billion during the quarter, down 500,000 month-on-month. Due to the decline in the number of active users and the slowdown in advertising revenue growth, Meta's stock price plunged by 20% after the earnings report, and its market value shrank by $200 billion.
Instagram, another social ace owned by Meta, while still growing in users, has also shown decline in competition with TikTok. Especially for younger users, TikTok is significantly more attractive.
A Survey by Forrester shows that in 2021, 63 percent of Americans ages 12 to 17 use TikTok each week, up from 50 percent a year ago. At the same time, the proportion of people who use Instagram has dropped from 61% in 2020 to 57% in 2021.
Although Meta has a multi-billion dollar bonus program, for young people, including creators and users, Tiktok has a stronger content atmosphere, especially in the course of the epidemic, a lot of humorous and funny content on this platform is of great help to young people who stay at home to pass the time.
Zuckerberg's only possible compliment now is that Meta's commercial revenue is higher than TikTok's, and the data shows that the revenue of the two is not at all on the same order of magnitude, and the february earnings report showed that Meta's advertising revenue in 2021 was $114.93 billion. The media disclosed that TikTok's revenue in 2021 will reach $4 billion.
Of course, the number of users is in place, commercialization is more of a matter of course, there are media reports, TikTok is also accelerating the commercialization process, at present, TikTok's advertising business is undertaken by the official platform TikTok For Business, the head of commercialization Blake Chandler previously worked in Meta for more than 12 years.
In the foreseeable future, in addition to product and user competition, the two sides will also open up competition in the field of commercial customers, which may be the last thing Zuckerberg wants to see.
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