As the future of TikTok continues to remain a mystery, reports on Thursday presented another major challenge for the company after the social media platform’s COO, Vanessa "V" Pappas, announced their resignation to employees in an internal memo that was later shared on Twitter.
Here's the note I sent to all TikTok employees this morning pic.twitter.com/4iB9Ph7b6q
— V Pappas (@v_ness) June 22, 2023
"Given all the successes reached at TikTok, I finally feel the time is right to move on and refocus on my entrepreneurial passions. Few had imagined what the last five years would look like and with all the incredible innovation happening now with generative AI, robotics, renewable energy, genomics, blockchain and the IoT, clearly the future will again look much different," Pappas wrote.
Of the many things TikTok has experimented with over the years, its foray into Web3 has been one that hasn’t quite hit as much as many would have hoped, beginning with the integration of blockchain-based music platform Audius in February.
The integration allowed users new to Audius to create accounts by linking their TikTok profile, further enabling listeners to automatically import their user handle, information, and “blue-badge” verification status to Audius directly.
But at the heart of the integration was the ability for users to share Audius-native songs in their TikTok videos, further amplifying the reach of both platforms.
Audius co-founder and chief product officer Forrest Browning told CoinDesk in February that because of TikTok’s evolution into a “social media juggernaut” over the past few years, enabling Audius’ integration would attract “an even wider group of talent” to the platform.
In September 2021, the platform released an NFT collection of videos from TikTok’s most popular creators, but like many well-intentioned attempts we’ve seen in the space, the underlying purpose and “why” seemed to be lacking.
Pappas, who for a long time, has served as the company’s face of US-based operations, first assumed the role of COO in May 2021, spending a majority of time attempting to publicly distance its US arm from its Chinese ownership.
In lieu of their departure, Pappas will still remain with the company in an advisory rule, but their departure only adds to the fortuitous nature of the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the company’s legitimacy as lawmakers at both the state and federal level work to actively ban the mobile app on grounds of national security.
With Pappas’ departure, TikTok is moving its Chief of Staff Adam Presser up to head of operations, according to an email reportedly seen by Gizmodo, while former Disney executive Zenia Mucha joins as TikTok’s new Chief Brand and Communications Officer.
In March, TikTok began blocking links to app stores in creators’ bios, according to a TechCrunch report, which reportedly also extended to third-party link-in-bio solutions like Linktree.
In other news, read about Roblox and its invitation to gamers to build mature experiences catered to 17+.
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