TikTok hits 100m user milestone in Europe

Amid reports of deal with Oracle for its US operations, TikTok on Monday said it has reached a new milestone of over 100 million monthly active users in Europe.

TikTok also revealed that it now has over 1,600 employees in Europe, working across a wide range of areas including brand and creator engagement, commercialisation, music, product, privacy, policy and safety.

"Against the backdrop of the extraordinary times we're all living through, it's also been a pretty extraordinary year for our business. We've been humbled to see how Europe has embraced TikTok during the time we've been here," Rich Waterworth, General Manager, Europe - TikTok, said in a blog post on Monday.

"Today, more than 100m people across the region are active on TikTok every month," Waterworth said.

The short video-sharing platform owned by Chinese unicorn ByteDance had already revealed about a month ago that it reached 100 million users in the US where it is facing threat of a ban unless it divests its operations in the country by Sept.20.

New details about ByteDance's negotiations with US-based companies emerged on Sunday when Microsoft revealed that its bid for TikTok's US operations were rejected.

Microsoft reportedly entered into the fray in partnership with Walmart.

Walmart in a separate statement said that it "continues to have an interest in a TikTok investment and continues discussions with ByteDance leadership and other interested parties."

"We know that any approved deal must satisfy all regulatory and national security concerns," Walmart said.

The New York Times and other US media outlets reported that Bytedance has chosen Cloud major Oracle over Microsoft to run its US operations as a "trusted tech partner."

According to the NYT, it was unclear whether TikTok's choice of Oracle as a technology partner would mean that "Oracle would also take a majority ownership stake of the social media app."

However, state-owned Chinese media reported that ByteDance will neither sell TikTok's US operations to Oracle nor give the source code to any US buyer in that country.

Indo-Asian News Service