- When asked if TikTok is a friend or foe to Snapchat, Snap cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel gave a definitive answer: “Friend.”
- Spiegel touted successful developer and advertising partnerships between the two companies.
- He also said TikTok is contributing to an increase in the amount of time people are spending on mobile devices, which is good news for Snapchat.
- The outlook diverges from other social media giants like Facebook, who see TikTok as a rising threat.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
An analyst had a pointed question for Snap cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel during the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday: “Is TikTok friend or foe?”
Spiegel’s answer: “We definitely consider them a friend.”
The response marks a different outlook from other social media giants, which have reacted to the meteoric rise of the Chinese video-sharing app with concern. Mark Zuckerberg described TikTok as one of Facebook’s emerging competitors earlier this month, noting that it had already surpassed the number of Instagram users in India.
Spiegel cited a few reasons to call TikTok a friend. For one, Snap and TikTok have active developer and advertising partnerships. The apps provide starkly different services, he argued, meaning they aren’t in direct competition.
And more broadly, TikTok is leading people to spend more time on their smartphones, which Spiegel sees as good news for Snapchat.
“Time spent on mobile is growing. We’re both growing our businesses in a very rapidly growing industry overall,” he said. “The value they provide to their community is very different than the value we provide to ours.”
Snapchat has 210 million daily active users, a 13 percent increase from last year, Spiegel said during the earnings call. ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns TikTok, has roughly 700 million daily active users across its apps, it said in July.
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