Coronavirus couldn’t stop TikTok, Trump could

This appeared in The Millennial Source

The popular social media and video sharing platform TikTok has continued its meteoric rise to become one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide.

Where other tech companies have faced difficult days due to the coronavirus, due to ongoing geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, TikTok is instead facing imminent acquisition by Microsoft Corp. or the prospect of being banned by the Trump administration due to alleged data concerns.

Deals in the time of coronavirus

TikTok’s potential acquisition by Microsoft has little in common with broader trends seen within the tech and startup industry. As a result of the pandemic, acquisitions and purchases have increasingly been made on the cheap.

Startup companies, which already led perilous existences prior to the pandemic, now face what Martin Pichinson, head of Sherwood Partners — an advisory firm that helps failed startups to restructure — calls “the great unwinding.”

Between March and April this year, Public Knowledge reports that some 7,000 tech startup jobs were lost. As Alex Petros writes, the fraught times brought about by the coronavirus pandemic have left Big Tech companies such as Apple Inc…