[jariel]

This will be Nadella's Albatross.

He's been given far too much credit for being a 'nice guy' whilst most operationalising the foundations left for him. He has not done anything fundamental for the company, other than changed the tone of the leadership of the company. He's a good steward.

TikTok is completely out of MS cultural reach, and in that way it's a poor fit. Remember Skype? How about IE that ruled the world and MS couldn't figure it out either.

To boot, TikTok is a fad. It's just a bigger vine, and teenager will quickly move on to something more substantial over time.

FB is truly a social network and has a degree of lock-in and therefore staying power, but younger people have largely fled it as well. Snapchat and Twitter both have baseline utility for communicating.

I'm not sure TikTok is any of that - it has the faddish appeal, but none of the underlying utility.

[AlanYx]

Amen. I don't even really understand why most of the commentary surrounding this potential acquisition refers to TikTok as a social network.

TikTok is much closer to a video playback/sharing platform (somewhere between YouTube and Vine) than a social communication platform. Direct messaging isn't even enabled by default, and even in direct messaging you're very limited in what you can send. You can't even send images unless they're already in the TikTok universe.

It just doesn't seem to be any more of a social network than YouTube is. I can perhaps see some possible value in Microsoft acquiring a fulsome social network of some kind, but a faddish YouTube-like platform? It's baffling.

[OldHand2018]

> This will be Nadella's Albatross.

It certainly has the danger of being like Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto and all the Roundup liability.

TikTok is facing many privacy lawsuits including the same Illinois biometric law problem that Facebook is currently trying to resolve. You'll remember that Facebook attempted a $550 million settlement, but the judge rejected it as being far too little. So now it is $650 million and as far as I've heard the judge has yet to accept or reject it. Facebook has admitted that this lawsuit could potentially cost them up to $45 billion if it goes to a jury.

I've seen commentary that TikTok will try to resolve all the lawsuits quickly so it can be acquired. But Facebook has been trying to settle their lawsuit for 6 months or more, and TikTok doesn't have that kind of time.

There are many out there that certainly must have far more insight into this than me, but I am definitely skeptical about this idea.

[mywittyname]

I'd argue Microsoft does not need a shakeup right now. Much like with Tim Cook & Apple, keeping things humming along nicely is all they need to print lots of cash for the foreseeable future.

I suspect, what will happen with TikTok is they will migrate the company over completely to Windows/Azure products internally, so that it's funneling a good deal of money back to the mothership, then spin it off into a stand-alone company. They'll make a decent profit off this.

This isn't MS's typical strategy, but it's not unheard of either. Since TT doesn't really compete with any of MS's core segments, but it also doesn't compliment any of them, I think this is the most likely scenario.