Welcome to Axis ProRata, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank, Ideas Bank here. I'm Danper Mack. On today's show, Facebook Friends, a Democratic presidential candidate, and how e-sports

could become part of the Olympics.

But first, the future of news is short and funny and often musical.

What I'm talking about here is TikTok, the pithy video app that has overtaken America's middle

schools and high schools with over 500 million monthly active users.

For context, that's hundreds of millions more than Snapchat.

And in 2018, TikTok overtook YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook in terms of downloads.

Now, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called Bite Dance, which is now considered to be the

world's most valuable startup at $75 billion, which has created all sorts of concern in DC and Silicon

Valley that it's vulnerable to censorship or data privacy risks.

But that hasn't slowed down its U.S. adoption, including at the Washington Post.

Yeah, that Washington Post, which earlier this year began posting videos that thematically

look a little bit like the Office TV show, but for an audience

that wasn't even born when that show began.

Bottom line here is that news organizations are desperate to hook the next generation, and TikTok

could be the means to that end, even if it doesn't look anything like traditional journalism.

The Washington Post's TikTok feed, for example, had over a billion views since launch.

Now, there's no direct way to monetize that yet, but that was also true in the early days of

Snapchat and Instagram, and there is just no way that a billion eyeballs won't turn into cash,

eventually for someone. In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper with Dave Jorgensen, who runs the

Washington Post's TikTok account. But first, this.

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