Could a Twitter and TikTok merger be in the works?

The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that San Francisco-based Twitter had preliminary talks about a potential combination with TikTok, the popular video-sharing app, citing people familiar with the matter.

The tweet sent out Friday read, "Hello everyone. As you all know, today is embarking on a new year, one dedicated to changing how we all read and consume media. We're just getting started. Keep

on tweeting ♥ #TikTok #Twitter".

A post on TikTok's website said the user service for Twitter's service had been paused over the weekend for "due to technical problems." It also said it was working closely with Twitter on honoring the suspensions.

"This is an effort to ensure your tweets will be seen even if the Twitter service is down," it said.

A Facebook official, who set the timing of the ban in a statement late Friday, would neither confirm the Google-Google deal nor say whether it would affect it.

The WhatsApp-BlackBerry split

Despite the courtroom dust-up, some tiptoed to avoid violating the court order.

BlackBerry, which conceded to the court it had thwarted communications between San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, had said it was trying to grow its users outside of the country because that would give it "a different perspective."

On Tuesday, the company announced a dramatic change of course, increasing the size of its universal Android messaging service to include not just messages between users, but also those from other BlackBerry devices in contact with them.

But BlackBerry said the new app would give second- and third-party entrepreneurs the chance to build a restricted version of the free service. Many such applications use encryption such as end-to-end, or end-to-end safe from snoops.

If it did not comply with the court order, BlackBerry could face steep penalties that could be "comparable to or more stringent" than undertakings such as those given by cellphone makers Apple Inc. AAPL 1.72% and Samsung Electronics Co.

"If you are a customer of a company that is happy to hand out a key—to the law, if you will—you can run from third-party software," Ivan Krstic, the executive vice president of security firm White Ops, said in an interview.

Write to Daisuke Wakabayashi at [email protected], Morgan Marquis-Boire at [email protected] and Jonathan D. Rockoff at [email protected]
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