If ByteDance is forced to sell TikTok to another company, there are places worse than Microsoft where a media platform could wind up (like Verizon). Microsoft’s unexpected emergence as TikTok’s potential next parent company has raised eyebrows. Microsoft still owns Bing’s search engine, Xbox’s gaming console and even MSN’s online portal, but it has become more of a business-facing tech company than a consumer proposition. Read more below.

• For Digiday+ members, with more questions than answers at the moment, here is an attempt to answer some of the main questions surrounding Microsoft’s potential acquisition of TikTok.
• Against a backdrop of EU data regulation and wider moves from browsers and tech platforms to tighten up their privacy controls, experts say the region has become a hotbed of innovation primed for more deal activity.
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• In order to keep on schedule to launch ahead of the U.S. presidential election, non-profit publisher The 19th had to rely heavily on membership and fundraising to meet its launch goal of $4 million.
• Morning Brew has spent 2020 expanding its advertising operations in the hopes of attracting more brand advertising and diversifying into new ad products.