With no viable social media platform so far, Google is keen to acquire one as its efforts to create its own product failed every time. Now that Firework is fast emerging as the rival to popular Tik-Tok, Google has set its sight on the US-based video-making social media app.
Tik-Tok is the most used video-making app among youth to create short music videos by using already available audio clips and filters in the app. This app became so popular among the youth, especially among teenagers. From small kids to adults, everyone appeared to be using it crazily. Just like in every business, Tik-Tok also has competitors.
Similar to Tik-Tok, there is another app named "Firework". It is a US-based video-making mobile app based in Redwood City, California. The app has a similar set of features like Tik-Tok which allows users to make 30-sec videos and share it with strangers. Surprisingly in a short period, the US-based app became popular worldwide in a quick time than its rival app Tik-Tok.
They recently appointed Sunil Nair as its new CEO and Managing Director for India operations. Prior to this role, he was was the Chief Operating Officer of ALTBalaji. The new CEO said in his statement, "My vision for Firework in India is to become more relevant and give our users every opportunity to stay meaningful and seamlessly experience a new view from their lens".
According to WSJ reports, Firework raised $100 million in the fundraising round that happened this year. They also privately raised $30 million from venture-capital firms which include, IDG Capital, GSR Venture, and Lightspeed Venture Partners China.
All this caught Google's attention and the giant has decided to hold discussions with Firework with a plan to acquire them. Weibo - a Chinese micro-blogging company and Google acquired "YouTube" also manifested a similar interest in acquiring Firework.
Reports said that the pricing front is still not taken up in the discussions.
In November 2018, Facebook had created and released a similar app like Tik-Tok named Lasso. This app is alike Tik-Tok and is currently used in the US. But, day by day video content is improving and a plethora of users are adding daily. A few years back, Google had acquired YouTube and made it into a top online video platform for everyone.
According to Statista, As of May 2019, more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This equates to approximately 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour.
These days a lot of people love watching shorter format videos, which is less than two minutes. This became a new trend in today's world. And the kind of curated content required is available with Tik-Tok and then Firework.
After the failure of Google+, the search engine decided to make a remarkable impression on social media by acquiring Firework, which is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms with more than 1 million downloads in one year.
This app is currently available for download on Android (Google Play) and Apple stores.
