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The on-off [talks / talk] between Microsoft and the parent company of TikTok are back on again. Microsoft has been [interesting / interested] in buying part of TikTok for [many / much] months. The tech giant has been in talks with the [parent / child] company ByteDance Ltd. Discussions between the two companies came to a [vault / halt] last week when US President Donald Trump suggested that he might ban TikTok from the USA. He was worried that the [personal / personality] details of over 100 million Americans could get into the [wrong / right] hands. President Trump [charged / changed] his mind at the weekend after the CEO of Microsoft [phoned / phone] him. Microsoft said it "would ensure that all private data of TikTok's American users is transferred to and remains [on / in] the United States."

TikTok is the latest social media [inform / platform] to become [huge / hugely] popular around the [globe / global] . Users upload very short videos of themselves lip-syncing to well-known songs, dancing, [make / making] funny faces or doing other humorous [things / thing] . TokTok's owner ByteDance is a Beijing-based Internet company [floundered / founded] in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming. It now has over 800 million [usage / users] worldwide. Microsoft is offering ByteDance $50 billion for the [operations / surgeries] in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. However the business website Bloomberg disagrees with that [worth / valuation] . It said: "The idea that TikTok - without the UK, India or dozens of other emerging markets - is worth $50 billion today is [fanciful / fancies] .