FORTUNE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 115surmises, the equivalent of onboard-
ing at Facebook in 2007. However,
he declares TikTok to be in a funda-
mentally different business. Facebook
is a “social graph” company, built to
connect users and encourage them to
tune into mutual interests. Chandlee
believes the underlying business mod-
el of Facebook and its ilk—harnessing
vast amounts of user data to deliver
personalized ads—is falling out of
favor, driven in part by the movement
to allow consumers to control their
data and manifested in, for instance,
Apple’s security settings and the
EU’s GDPR policies. (The fact that
Facebook’s market value has grown by
nearly $500 billion over the past two
years alone suggests that Wall Street
hasn’t yet caught up with his assess-ment.) By contrast, Chandlee calls
TikTok a “content graph” company
whose primary goal is not to connect
but rather to entertain. Nevertheless,
TikTok is learning about you. It uses
data for ad personalization targeted
to personal interests and to serve both
interesting and novel videos. The
company professes concern over filter
bubbles, in which users are repeat-Onetime Facebook
exec Blake Chandlee,
photographed at his
home in Austin, is
TikTok’s point person
for brand partnerships.PHOTOGRAPH BY MARSHALL TIDRICK