Twitter has become the latest suitor for Chinese owned video app, Tik Tok after Microsoft amid the threat of US President, Donald Trump banning the app from the US market.
According the Wall Street Journal, Twitter has entered preliminary discussions with the parent company of Tik Tok, ByteDance, for a possible merger after Donald Trump threatened to ban the app citing National security reasons.
Trump who is also targeting WeChat, said both Chinese apps threatened the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States and gave a grace of 45 days for US businesses to stop doing business with both apps.
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Microsoft had originally indicated interest in the app, requesting its parent company, ByteDance to sell its US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations.
After Trump’s order on Thursday which effectively gave ByteDance a deadline to sell its US operations, Microsoft expanded talks to take over the global operations of Tik Tok.
Despite Microsoft being the larger and more capable company, Twitter believes it has a chance at buying Tik Tok because it would come under less antitrust scrutiny that larger firms like Microsoft.
Critics of the move have said, Twitter would need the support of other investors to complete certain aspects of the proposed merger, citing the demise of Vine which shut down in 2016 after being acquired by twitter in 2012.