Tuesday, 04 Aug 2020 06:55 PM MYT
Bearing hashtags like #SaveTikTok and #Microsoft, which have attracted nearly 1 billion views combined, TikTok’ers — an overwhelmingly young group that uses the app to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy and talent videos — embraced a company founded by people their grandparent’s age and whose former chief executive’s pre-internet-era onstage outbursts and profuse sweating are now a YouTube meme.
Under Satya Nadella, who took over as Microsoft CEO in 2014, the company purchased two large online communities that it has allowed to operate essentially autonomously. After acquiring business-oriented network LinkedIn for US$26.2 billion , LinkedIn kept its brand identity, CEO and its own offices, while GitHub, the code-repository service acquired in 2018, has continued to build tools that help developers use Microsoft’s rivals.