Media War Widens, Social Media Applications Challenge Film And TV Companies

JAKARTA - Instagram wants to be more like TikTok. While TikTok wants to extend the duration of its videos to make it more like YouTube. Roku, the TV streaming app, wants to keep up with Netflix and invest in original videos.

During this streaming war in the world, it is generally discussed as a competition between global media companies such as Disney, NBCUniversal Comcast, WarnerMedia AT&T, ViacomCBS, Discovery. Or and old players like Netflix and Amazon.

However, now most of the television can be delivered via the internet. So the lines of competition between traditional media companies and online video services like TikTok, Google's YouTube, Facebook's Instagram, and Amazon's Twitch are blurred.

Current differentiation, user-generated content vs. script, free vs. subscribe, short-form vs. long-form, game vs. professional sports, will inevitably disappear over time as every company tries to dominate the attention of consumers.

“While it is still common for consumers and industry executives to think of cable and video streaming services as 'TV,' and platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram as 'social media,' they are one and the same. “These binary labels are becoming obsolete every day,” said Kirby Grines, founder, and CEO of 43Twenty, a digital marketing and strategic advisory firm focused on the video streaming industry.

Netflix last year saw TikTok as a competitor for the first time. In Netflix's opinion, anything that interferes with the use of Netflix, is competition.

But there's a reason why Netflix considers TikTok specifically. TikTok may have started as a user-generated dance music video service, but thousands of content creators earn a salary from video scripting for the service.

These influencers are already top celebrities for teens, and the cross between TikTok and Netflix has begun. That's one of the reasons why Netflix should seriously consider buying a stake in TikTok.

Instagram Facebook, then launched IGTV in 2018 and Reels as a competitor to TikTok. Reel, is a short video feature that allows Instagram users to create content with audio overlays and augmented reality effects, in August 2020.

Instagram is moving to show full-screen videos on the devices of users who want to earn more video ad money while developing more opportunities for creators. They also want to provide users with new entertainment options.

“We are no longer a photo-sharing app or a square photo-sharing app,” Instagram Chief Executive Officer Adam Mosseri said in a June 30 video.

“There is some very serious competition at the moment. TikTok is huge, YouTube is even bigger, and there are lots of other startups too. People look to Instagram to be entertained. There is stiff competition, there is still a lot to be done and we have to accept it."

When the old media companies shifted their business to streaming, competitors who didn't have enough content on a global scale began to consolidate. AT&T's decision to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery and Amazon's deal to buy MGM are two recent examples. But Time Warner and Fox's decision to sell AT&T and Disney, however, shows that both are preparing for the fall of the era of linear television.

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube were the main competitors of the old media, so it became easier for relatively smaller media companies like ViacomCBS, NBCUniversal, or even Warner Bros-Discovery union to claim that they should be allowed to merge with each other or be acquired by the company. the greater one.

But the media company's merger into a new, larger company could be problematic for US regulators.

The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) treatment of Amazon's MGM acquisition will be a test of how it views the tech industry's move to old media.

"If the FTC blocks the deal, it's a sign the government has moved away from a competition-based definition of antitrust and more towards a definition of "we don't like big, powerful companies," said Doug Melamed, Stanford Law professor and former assistant attorney general of the DOJ's antitrust division.