TikTok vs Instagram | Hitmaker | 4

Business Wars

Wondery

History, Business, David Brown, Management

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2020

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s November 2018. Mark Zuckerberg takes a hit as his copycat TikTok product fails miserably. Then, Instagram faces another disaster when a security breach draws ire from users. But Zuckerberg decides to launch a direct attack on his Chinese competitor.

TikTok emerges as a major hitmaker in the music business and cements its place in pop culture. But founder Zhang Yiming's hot app comes under scrutiny from regulators, as it gets drawn into a geopolitical battle that could spell the end of TikTok.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to business wars at free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.
0:15.4	November 2018, Menlo Park, California. Mark Zuckerberg is in his office waiting for a report from
0:21.7	one of his lieutenants. Dark bags hang under his eyes. It's been a grueling year. Zuckerberg has had
0:28.8	to testify before a distrustful Senate. They grilled him about Facebook's handling of data privacy,
0:34.8	Russian election, interference, and the spread of disinformation. The public is souring on Facebook,
0:41.5	and everywhere he turns, there's competition. TikTok's downloads reportedly exceed those
0:47.1	of Instagram, but also of Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube. Mark Lasso is live. Okay, keep me updated
0:57.1	on the numbers. Lasso is Facebook's attempt to directly compete with TikTok. It's an exact copy.
1:03.9	Users can upload 15-second videos to this new app and set them to music. After witnessing the
1:09.6	power of music to draw people to TikTok, Zuckerberg's secured licensing deals with major record labels.
1:16.0	Now, users can add songs to posts on Lasso as well as on Facebook and Instagram. And since he's
1:22.7	been burned before, Zuckerberg is launching Lasso quietly, so engineers can fix any problems before
1:29.0	users publicly vent about them. An hour later, Zuckerberg gets another call from his deputy.
1:36.4	Mark, the numbers aren't looking good. What's going on? Barely anyone is downloading it.
1:43.5	By February 2019, only 70,000 users have downloaded Lasso in the US. In that same three-month period,
1:51.9	TikTok logs 40 million downloads. For Zuckerberg, it's a humiliating defeat. And TikTok is just warming up.
2:06.8	13 years ago, in one of the cramped dorm rooms of prestigious Sarah Lawrence College,
2:11.8	a nightmare unfolded. The students didn't know it yet, but when a bizarre new roommate moved in,
2:17.1	he would change their lives forever. Devil in the dorm, an exclusive new podcast on Wondery Plus,
2:23.1	dives into the horrifying story of Larry Ray, who moved into the dorms with his daughter.
2:28.1	Shortly thereafter, he started to control, manipulate, and brainwash some of the students.
2:33.0	And before long, Ray had amassed what could be best described as a small cult following.
	...

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