I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high? I know tech valuations at this point basically price in compulsory use of their products, but that’s pretty stiff even by contemporary standards right?
Top hit [1] says $200 billion, which is little more believable, but unlike Meta, TikTok has real competition across its entire surface, Meta can leverage its other monopolies and I’m not sure TikTok will be the first social network ever to avoid being encircled, outlasted, and strangled by Menlo Park.
> I don’t doubt TikTok is wildly valuable. Is it really that high?
I think TikTok is currently in the too valuable to measure state. It can literally be used (and some say it has already been used) to drastically influence politics in other countries.
The revenue generated is literally nothing at this stage in my opinion. China would be more than happy to spend billions at a loss if it means it can keep the same reach.
TikTok reported 16B in revenue in 2023. In the same period SNAP reported 4B in revenue. You could conservatively say TikTok is worth 80B from that metric alone.
>I’m not sure TikTok will be the first social network ever to avoid being encircled, outlasted, and strangled by Menlo Park.
TikTok’s growth has been massive - but you may be right only because Meta decided to get the teacher to change the rules; not because Meta was able to out execute TikTok
$500M is nothing to sneeze at, but that is like 3 orders of magnitude less than TikTok’s value.