Off in another portion of the media forest, the communications platform vendors keep building their own empires.  The latest news is that messaging vendor Gupshup has purchased cloud communications platform Knowlarity.  The deal gives GupShup new capabilities for cloud telephony, contact centers, AI-powered chatbots, and speech analytics.  The combination of cloud communication platforms in marketing and customer experience applications probably deserves more attention than it’s been getting.

Some people might confuse Acxiom with a CDP, although they are quite clear their business is selling customer information.  They just announced an integration with CDP Treasure Data, which will use Acxiom’s identity capabilities to help customers build their own identity graphs.  Acxiom has deals with other CDPs, although this integration might be deeper than most.

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.