Elon Musk Prepping for Next Social Media Takeover? Drops Major Hint About TikTok: 'What Could We Do ...?'
As a quick reminder, Elon Musk once casually mentioned the idea of buying Twitter. A few months later, he bought Twitter, so nothing is out of the realm of possibility at this point, as far as Musk’s business decisions are concerned.
That said, a pair of Musk’s most recent tweets have sparked new rounds of speculation regarding his next possible venture in the social media world. Because he’s a man who obviously puts his big piles of money where his mouth is, it’s a newsworthy development.
According to a set of tweets published Sunday night by the Tesla and SpaceX founder, it appears that Musk is showing interest in potentially competing against TikTok, the controversial short-form video content network that has skyrocketed in popularity over the past two years.
The first clue was his first tweet on the subject, in which he posted a simple Twitter poll asking his 112 million followers a simple question: “Bring back Vine?”
Bring back Vine?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
As of Monday morning, the poll had garnered an astonishing 3.84 million responses, with roughly 69 percent of respondents indicating that they would like to see Musk bring Vine back.
Vine was TikTok’s predecessor in many ways.
It was a platform filled with often-humorous, short-form video clips of people and animals doing weird and crazy stuff. The platform was all the rage for several years until it was ultimately shut down because of a lack of monetization opportunities and too much competition, The Verge reported at the time.
For the unaware, Vine, according to CNBC, was purchased by Twitter in 2012, which means it’s now Musk’s to revive if he so chooses.
Musk, shortly after the Vine poll tweet, asked his followers what could make Vine a better app than TikTok, firing up instant rumors that Musk might have another business opportunity on the horizon in the social media space.
“What could we do to make it better than TikTok?,” Musk tweeted.
What could we do to make it better than TikTok?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022
The question, unsurprisingly, received thousands of replies with a mountain of ideas regarding a possible Vine reboot.
Benny Johnson replied, “Make it a free speech platform not run by communists. Kinda like you did with Twitter.”
Several additional commenters shared similar ideas. One use wrote that Vine should be brought back without the “CCP spyware,” referencing consistent reports that China has a great interest in TikTok’s ability to collect mountains of data on its American users.
The fact that it wouldn’t be owned by a bad faith foreign actor intent on disrupting our society while stealing all our data would be a start
— Rob Smith 🇺🇸 (@robsmithonline) October 31, 2022
While it’s anyone’s guess as to what Musk will do with his polling information, TechCrunch suggested it could be his go-to “throwing spaghetti at a wall” tactic to gauge what users want and what might be worth exploring.
TechCrunch reported that Twitter’s press team didn’t respond with further comment on the developing story.
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