The Cultural Impact of Footprint Expansion

As companies make decisions to go global and expand their “footprint”, many (especially startups) focus mostly on the horizon of sales and marketing and don’t fully recognize or address cultural impact, legal oversight and governing laws.

At minimum, legal and governing bodies must be considered to make appropriate risk assessments on how a product goes to market and the expected demographics targeted.

The cultural impact of footprint expansion can have far reaching impacts.

As we witness the continued evolution of the social media ecosystem, coupled with how many of these platforms rapidly grow from startup to globally adopted, consider the implications of global growth as you read the below articles — both regarding the Chinese platform Tiktok, in the UK and in the US:

FTC ruling sees Musical.ly (TikTok) fined $5.7M for violating children’s privacy law, app updated with age gate

TikTok under investigation over child data use: UK inquiry looking at whether video-sharing app breaches data protection law

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Courtesy of Michael D. Soileau, Board Member and Vice President, Wholesale and Development, Xfinity Consumer Services.