Walmart joins Microsoft in TikTok acquisition bid, Oracle offers $20 billion

By Meira Gebel August 27, 2020

Walmart has joined Microsoft in its bid to acquire TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app popular among Generation Z, according to multiple reports on Thursday, August 27.

Microsoft has long been the frontrunner in TikTok’s very public purchase battle since President Donald Trump threatened to ban the app over national security concerns. Walmart’s “partnership would meet both the expectations of U.S. TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of U.S. government regulators,” the company said in a statement on Thursday. Trump ordered that the app be sold by a September deadline.

“The way TikTok has integrated e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets,” a Walmart spokesperson told CNBC in a statement.

But Walmart is not the only billion-dollar company joining in on potential acquisition bids. On Thursday, The Wrap reported that Oracle, which sells software and cloud engineering technology, offered ByteDance, which owns TikTok, $20 billion — $10 billion in cash, and $10 billion in Oracle stock — while also agreeing that half of any of TikTok’s profits will go right back to ByteDance. This is the first time a dollar amount has been placed on the purchase of the social media app, which has an estimated value of up to $50 billion.

TikTok will reportedly announce more details on the deal in the coming days, according to The New York Times, but it still remains unclear which acquisition deal will come out on top.

Digital Trends reached out to TikTok, Microsoft, Walmart, and Oracle for more information. We will update this story when we hear back.

On Wednesday, TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer resigned from his post after three months, citing political pressure from the Trump administration, but told employees in a letter to expect a resolution to the acquisition soon.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Meira Gebel is a freelance reporter based in Portland. She writes about tech, social media, and internet culture for Digital…

Social Media

Is TikTok leaking drafts? Let’s take a closer look at this rumor

The TikTok app on a smartphone's screen. The smartphone is sitting on a white table.

Not every social media post is ready for prime time. Sometimes you write a post or film a video and decide that it's better to not publish it. That's fine. That's what the Drafts folder is for. That folder is built to hold your works-in-progress, mistakes, and other too-goofy-for-public-consumption posts and videos. The Drafts folder is probably one that you take for granted, but what if that folder (via a particularly viral-prone social media platform) were to have its content leaked and published for the world to see? Scary, isn't it?

That's the fear that's behind a certain, now years-long TikTok rumor going around. But is it true? Is TikTok leaking its users' drafts? In this guide, we're taking a closer look at this rumor and fact-checking it.
The rumor
As far as we can tell, the whole "TikTok leaks drafts" rumor dates back to at least the summer of 2020. It's not a rumor that really made mainstream news headlines, but it did get some coverage with lesser-known websites, and it does have a tendency to resurface repeatedly. The last time it resurfaced was in August 2022. Here's what we know about it:

Social Media

TikTok pivots to photos while its competitors are still chasing its viral videos

Smartphone with TikTok's Photo Mode all on a white background.

TikTok's competitors have been all over the news recently for essentially copying the short-form video sharing app's most successful moves. But while everyone else is pivoting to video, TikTok is now taking swings in the other direction: photos.

On Thursday, TikTok announced a slew of new editing and creation features, but the one tool that caught our eye was Photo Mode. Because the image that TikTok shared in its official announcement depicted a photo carousel-style image post that looks a lot like Instagram.

Social Media

New feature shows that even Twitter wants to be like TikTok now

Twitter's new full screen feature for videos on the mobile app.

Is TikTok the new queen bee of social media? It appears so as even Twitter couldn't resist copying TikTok. Twitter's latest feature announcement seems to be yet another indication that the viral video app sensation is clearly the new leader among its peers. After all, TikTok is setting trends and its competitors are all following them.

On Thursday, Twitter announced two new video-focused features for its app and one of those features bears a strong resemblance to TikTok. That feature (known as the "immersive media viewer") allows users to open videos in a vertical "full-screen mode" -- just like TikTok -- and continue to view more videos by swiping up (also just like TikTok).