What’s happening with the big and small in social media? What is Facebook, TikTok and Quora up to? Here’s what’s happening:

TikTok – what’s the latest about that?

Despite TikTok’s attempts to convince U.S. legislators that it operates wholly independently from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, it looks like TikTok will now spin off to either go public or for acquisition. Microsoft, however is in talks to acquire TikTok. The company is also reportedly in negotiation to take TikTok’s operations to US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Microsoft at first glance may seem like an odd fit for Tiktok. But, there are good reasons for it too. A U.S. roof allows TikTok to stay focused on building its creator ranks and Microsoft would allow TikTok to run independently while taking advantage of the data insights and integrations wherever it makes sense.

Tiktok has also launched a Transparency and Accountability Center – where experts can observe and see tiktok’s moderation policies and examine the actual code that drives its algorithms.

Quora ads to help capture leads

A few months ago, Quora has rolled out Lead Gen Forms for advertisers after a few months of beta testing. The form contains contact information like first name, last name, email phone and employment info like Job Title, Company Name and Company size. It also contains Location info like City, State, Zip code. Totally, the form contains up to 12 fields. These fields are pre-filled with the information they have entered on Quara. It also offers a way to download the leads as CSV.

Facebook and local kirana stores

Facebook on the other hand is planning to bring India’s stores to WhatsApp. They are already in many ways on WhatsApp, but – now they plan to make it easier to shop from within WhatsApp. They have invested in the Indian Telecom firm Jio – to enable new opportunities for businesses of all sizes. They will help millions of kirana owners – the small neighbourhood convenience stores to digitize their product catalogs to connect with their customers.

The pandemic has truly accelerated the adoption of digital technology for businesses – small and large.