What a joke.
In little more than 14 hours, the ByteDance-owned TikTok went dark in the U.S. on Saturday night before a quick resurrection on Sunday.
You don’t need me to give you a backstory on the “how” and “why” of a battle involving two global superpowers, the U.S. and China, and a years-long back-and-forth between three administrations that sucked up precious resources while wasting time in the legal system, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The bottom line: TikTok is back in business.
Throughout the past week and as recently as last night, several contacts within the toy industry asked me why I hadn’t weighed in on the situation or offered readers a list of potential replacements for the wildly popular platform that more than 170 Americans use. Truth is, I did weigh in when I joined The Toy Guy, Chris Byrne, and John Baulch of Toy World UK for our annual year-end discussion on The Playground Podcast. I stated that the platform would not go away, citing President-elect Donald J. Trump’s recent affection for it.
There was never any real possibility that TikTok would take anything other than a short break. It took a power nap.
Killing TikTok = Bad for Business
If you remove your personal opinions of the platform, its content, or those who use it, at the end of the day, TikTok is a place where millions of small businesses thrive. From individual content creators and crafters to small manufacturers and independent toy and gift stores, pulling the plug is killing livelihoods.
Some may have valid privacy concerns, but digital anonymity is a myth. It gets muddy when users are a product, a valuable commodity for advertisers who give away rights by building businesses on platforms they don’t own. This is why, from the birth of the “creator economy” with MySpace, I have always said that any creator, influencer, media personality, blogger, pundit, etc., must maintain their own platform as a central home base. Because if the rug gets pulled, the lights get shut off, or the terms of service change, you may take a beating, but you’ll never fully be out.
In the toy industry, this means being on every social media platform while maintaining a robust platform of your own — starting with a proper official website. This may also mean connecting with influencers and brand advocates who cast a wide net of their own and software like FUNfuential [a division of Adventure Media & Events, publisher of The Toy Book] can help manage that.
Off-hand, I can think of around 10 toy companies that we’ll see on the international toy fair circuit in the weeks ahead that haven’t updated their own websites in years. Why? They put all their eggs in a social basket that, as we’ve just seen, can vaporize instantly.
A Bad Precedent
The greatest issue with the TikTok ban is forcing a company to sell its business.
While China needs to work with the U.S. to allow platforms such as X to operate freely within its country, the old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right” comes to mind.
In our space, what if China suddenly decided that a major toymaker could no longer make or sell toys in its country without selling its business to a Chinese company?
American companies employ workers in other countries, just as international companies employ U.S. workers at facilities in the States.
As a rule, a world of absolutes is a bad place.
Things work better when we work together.
Now, let’s get back to business.
