TikTok
12 statements across 5 episodes · 5 bullish · 6 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Dec 19, 2022 by Ben Gilbert · said 61 times in 18 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Ben Gilbert (28), David Rosenthal (25), Doug DeMuro (3), Ben Thompson (2), David Senra (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2024 35 mentions in 5 episodes 7 per episode
2023 11 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- Doug Demuro on Analyzing the Car Industry, Creator-Led Businesses, and Porsche Follow Up (Raw Video) · Acquired
- Spotify CEO Daniel Ek · Acquired
- Costco (Audio) · Acquired
- Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
Everything said about TikTok, oldest first
Dec 19, 2022 positive
Mar 29, 2023 negative
May 18, 2023 negative
Rosenthal: Million-view TikToks fail to convert podcast subscribers for Acquired
“We haven't acquired TikTok, we're on YouTube Shorts, we post on Twitter, and like, None of that drives the needle for us. Like, we've had videos on TikTok get a couple million views, and we don't know if it translated to a single new subscriber.”
Sep 20, 2023 bearish
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Rosenthal: Almost no company can match Meta's global integrity and anti-spam scale
“So, while probably, you know, YouTube, to a certain extent, TikTok, perhaps, also have similar strengths here, I doubt there is any other company in the world capable of actually operating privacy, integrity, and security, and within that is also anti-spam stu…”
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Oct 28, 2024 bearish
Gilbert: TikTok stealing users was a bigger existential threat than Apple's ATT
“The interesting thing is, at this time, the real threat wasn't actually ATT. The biggest of those three threats was TikTok stealing users. The whole ATT thing is about how much money can we make off of an ad because it is so well targeted? That's an optimizati…”
Oct 28, 2024 positive
ByteDance Is an AI Company Using TikTok Merely as a Deployment Vector
“ByteDance is an AI company. ByteDance is not a product company. And the core product that ByteDance makes is its AI, along with all sorts of other stuff. TikTok is like the product vector, one of many, and the biggest. By which they deploy their actual product…”
Oct 28, 2024 bearish
Oct 28, 2024 neutral
TikTok Operates as Media, Rendering an Authenticated Social Graph Irrelevant
“TikTok and ByteDance, its parent company, as you point out, Ben, was so completely orthogonal to everything that Facebook had learned over the past 15 years. Because, yes, number one, most importantly, it's not social media. It's media. There's no social. And …”
Oct 28, 2024 positive
Gilbert: Meta's core essence is its ability to move like water
“Ultimately, my big takeaway is the company moves like water. It is the company that has connected the world that will always gear up for the next battle and be whatever they need to be in the next era, and whether it's them defining the next generation of comp…”