Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement that for years they didn't realize that the TikTok service was social media.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg openly admitted that the company was late in anticipating the rise of TikTok. Speaking at the internal meeting, Zuckerberg stated that Meta developers did not initially see TikTok as a social media platform, but rather as a YouTube-like video sharing application.
Mark Zuckerberg: We didn't realize TikTok was social media
“When I look back at TikTok, I think one of the reasons why we took so long is that we didn't think of TikTok as social. We looked at it and thought, 'Oh, this is a bit more like YouTube,'” Mark Zuckerberg said.
It turns out that Meta missed key ways users can interact with TikTok, such as sharing videos through private message threads. This is despite the fact that this is a core feature of Meta's own platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
This admission from Zuckerberg reveals how the tech giant misjudged one of the most disruptive social media events of recent times. Zuckerberg's statement came at a time when Meta was facing off against DeepSeek, a new player in the artificial intelligence space.
In response to DeepSeek's rise, Meta created a crisis desk to analyze how the company was achieving high efficiency. This also highlighted the competition and pressure the company was facing in the field of artificial intelligence.
Zuckerberg warned his employees that the coming year would be challenging and asked them to “buckle up”. He emphasized that if Meta developers are unable to develop both Facebook and other Meta applications simultaneously, the company could be finished.
