The panic over TikTok's ban in the US has increased the use and downloads of many alternative social media apps, including Texas-based, Chinese-owned Clapper. RedNoteand Likee, a unknown platform outside of Singapore with an AI-powered video feed similar to TikTok's, according to new market research.
People in The US cannot access TikTok for about 14 hours late Saturday into Sunday after a federal law aimed at curbing alleged Chinese influence on the app went into effect and triggered an unprecedented incident of censorship on internet in a country that provides free expression. About 63 percent of US youth and a third of US adults use TikTok, according to Pew Research Center.
Among the places some of them have taken refuge is Likee, a TikTok clone launched by the profitable Singaporean tech company Joyy in 2017. Likee had about 33.9 million monthly users as of November, most of them outside the US . But on Saturday, Likee got 143 percent more downloads and 37 percent more usage in the US than the previous day, according to Sensor Towerwhich estimates the numbers by gathering data from a sample of devices. The trend continued into Sunday, when Likee usage was up 11 percent from a day earlier.
Estimates from Apptopia, another company that studies the app industry, show that for several months, Likee recorded fewer than 10,000 downloads per day in the US before jumping to nearly 167,000 on Sunday and around about 286,000 on Monday. Apptopia also estimated similar bumps for TikTok competitors Clapper and Flip.
On Tuesday, shares of Likee's parent company, Joyy, closed up about 3 percent, outperforming the average return among its Nasdaq peers. Joyy no broke Likee's finances, but it and some of its other sister apps collectively generated about $73 million in sales in the third quarter of last year from advertising and user purchases. Likee did not respond to a request for comment.
Other less frequent apps, including Clapper and Snap's Snapchat, drew higher interest over the weekend to the tune of double-digit gains in user activity. TikTok's biggest rivals, Meta's Instagram and Facebook, saw more modest single digit boots. YouTube and X, meanwhile, experienced little change in usage.
RedNote, another Chinese app that Americans have flock to in protest in the days before the ban, added 80 percent more users on Sunday than the previous day, according to Sensor Tower. In the first two days of the rush earlier in the week, more than 700,000 new users joined RedNote, Reuters reported. Known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, it recently ranked as the most downloaded free app on the Google and Apple app stores in the US.
TikTok is back online in the US on Sunday after president-elect Donald Trump promised to grant a temporary reprieve to the new law when he takes office the next day. The law, signed by former President Biden last year, effectively bans TikTok by threatening to fine web hosting providers and app stores that work with its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, unless it withdraws. it owns it on TikTok. Users came back to TikTok on Sunday, with daily active users up 17 percent on Saturday, Sensor Tower data shows.
On Monday, Trump issued an executive order giving 75 additional days to fix the TikTok dilemma. But the legality of his order remains in question, and TikTok is still not available in US app stores. But when TikTok users search, they are greeted with a list of alternatives—Likee, Clapper, and others among them.
