Amazon, Apple, Oracle, Blackstone, and others are bidding for TikTok, drawn by its massive distribution and social commerce potential. The social discovery market could hit $6 trillion by 2030. Owning a platform beats chasing algorithmic reach on someone else's.
You saw the bidders of TikTok. Some of them were came out and it was public.
I didn't see that.
A lot of reasons why people are bidding for TikTok is for distribution. They have a massive platform and it's just growing, at least in the United States. I know TikTok globally from all the countries I've been to that it's allowed in, like India, it's banned. But for the countries that it's allowed in, it's been growing. And Apple even made a bid for TikTok. Amazon made it and people are like, oh, Amazon put it last minute. I don't know how serious they are. I actually think Amazon's dead serious. And the reason being is it fits perfectly in their business model. It's a new way to do commerce.
One-click buy.
Yes. It's a great way to do commerce. Why wouldn't Amazon want to own a social platform where it just connects shopping and discovery together? Amazon.com is not the platform for social discovery.
And I think in China they do do the one-click buys, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah. And social discovery or social commerce is expected to grow to $6 trillion by 2030. So you look at AppLovin, You look at Amazon, Oracle, which was a bidder from the previous time. I think Oracle was partnered up with Walmart at that time. Blackstone, which makes sense, you know, big private equity shop. They can pretty much buy anything. Andreessen Horowitz was in there. I believe they partnered with maybe Oracle.
Yeah, because Oracle I think runs their servers.
Yeah. And there's, there has to be a few more that aren't listed out here. Like I know Mr. Wonderful was trying to make a bid. MrBeast joined some coalition. I think one of the Reddit guys, was it Reddit? The Alexis Ohanian. He was part of some group, right? As well.
Yeah.
So there was quite a few people making plays, but I don't think the Mr. Wonderfuls of the world, no offense to Mr. Wonderful.
Kevin O'Leary.
Yeah. I think he has some amazing, you know, words of wisdom to pass to a lot of people when it comes to the economy and growth. How much can he afford or his private, like they have to go and raise money from different people and get a group together to make the purchase. Well, someone like Blackstone can just write a check. Same with Amazon. They can just write a check. Oracle, they can figure it out. They're big enough, right? Like it's possible for these corporations to just go buy something that large. Oracle can go to a bank and a bank will finance them the whole thing plus the cash on their balance sheet. But there's a lot of organizations that are making a bid for TikTok. Like, yeah, we'll get together $50, $60 billion. That's not easy to do.
Yep. Yeah, I think, but the thing here is TikTok, who knows how long that distribution's going to last? I think the key thing is owning your distribution as much as you can. So you have a big email list, like that's, that's great, right? That will hold for longer than who knows how long these organic platforms will hold for. Um, and I think so key thing is one, you're betting on a long-term distribution, which might be your email list. That's one example. Um, but also short-term distribution is where, where is good organic reach right now? Okay. LinkedIn's pretty good right now.
Yeah.
TikTok's really good right now. Reels, Shorts, right? Those are good. I think YouTube's going to be good for the next decade or so. But the game, the name of the game, I think the 2 moats in the future, in the next 10 years, it's still going to be distribution, it's going to be data, but distribution is shrinking. If you're in B2B, here's the deal. LinkedIn account-based marketing sucks, but it doesn't have to. With Karat, it allows you to create personalized ads towards your customers and also personalized landing pages that align with the ads. So you're going to have higher conversions. And influence pipeline reporting to prove that your ABM works. So if you want to learn more, just go to karrot.ai and you can join the waitlist. Again, it's karrot, K-A-R-R-O-T.ai, and we'll see you on the other side.
Yeah, but if you look at TikTok or if Amazon ends up buying them, even if the reach shrinks down, they own the channel, which has amazing distribution. And I don't see that shrinking anytime soon.
Yeah, but Amazon is a distribution channel by itself too.
Yeah, they can make TikTok even more popular in the United States.
Yep.
But when I look at Amazon themselves, like when you look at social media as a marketer, that channel can shrink for you because the algorithm changes. But if you're the one who owns a channel like Meta owning Facebook and Instagram, yeah, the reach may slow down for you as a marketer, but they don't care. You have to spend more money on ads and they still do well. And if Amazon buys TikTok, yeah, your reach may go down as a TikTok user, but they're still making a killing from it because people start spending money to promote their products and generate sales.
Yeah, but anyway, that is it for today, guys. Uh, please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.
