Panic over the US TikTok ban spurred a surge in use and downloads of a slew of alternative social media apps, including Texas-based Clapper, China's RedNote and Likee, a little-known platform from Singapore with an AI -powered video feed similar to TikTok's, new market research shows.
People in the U.S. were locked out of TikTok for about 14 hours late Saturday into Sunday after a federal law aimed at curbing China's perceived influence over the app took effect, causing an unprecedented incident of internet censorship in a country that enjoys free expression of opinion is of paramount importance. According to the Pew Research Center, about 63 percent of American teens and a third of American adults use TikTok.
One of the places some of them took refuge was Likee, a TikTok clone launched in 2017 by profitable Singaporean tech company Joyy. Likee had about 33.9 million monthly users in November, most of whom were outside the US. But on Saturday, Likee attracted 143 percent more downloads and 37 percent more usage in the US than the day before, according to Sensor Tower, which estimates figures by collecting data from a number of devices. The trend continued until Sunday, when Likee usage rose 11 percent from the day before.
Estimates from Apptopia, another company that studies the app industry, show that Likee recorded fewer than 10,000 downloads per day in the US for months, before rising to almost 167,000 on Sunday and to around 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 about 3 percent higher than the average gain of its Nasdaq peers. Joyy doesn't break down Likee's financials, but the company and some of its other sister apps combined to generate about $73 million in revenue from ads and user purchases in the third quarter of last year. Likee did not respond to a request for comment.
Other lesser-visited apps, including Clapper's Snapchat and Snap, continued to gain interest this weekend, thanks to double-digit increases in user activity. TikTok's biggest rivals, Meta's Instagram and Facebook, saw more modest single-digit increases. YouTube and X, meanwhile, experienced little change in usage.
RedNote, another Chinese app that Americans had flocked to in protest in the days before the ban, added 80 percent more users on Sunday than the day before, according to Sensor Tower. In the first two days of the rush earlier this week, more than 700,000 new users joined RedNote, Reuters reported. Known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, it ranked as the most downloaded free app on the Google and Apple app stores in the US in recent days.
TikTok returned online in the US on Sunday after newly elected President Donald Trump promised to grant a temporary reprieve from the new law if he came to power the next day. The statute, signed last year by former President Biden, effectively bans TikTok by threatening fines for web hosting providers and app stores that partner with its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, unless it divests its ownership in TikTok. Users returned to TikTok in droves on Sunday, with daily active users rising 17 percent from Saturday, Sensor Tower data showed.
On Monday, Trump issued an executive order that provides an additional 75 days to resolve the TikTok dilemma. But the legality of his decree remains questionable, and TikTok is still unavailable in US app stores. But when users search for TikTok, they are greeted by a list of alternatives, including Likee, Clapper, and others.
