Panic over the US ban on TikTok has resulted in increased employ and downloads of many alternative social media apps, including Texas-based Clapper, China-owned RedNote and Likee, a little-known platform outside Singapore with an AI-powered video feed similar to TikTok, according to fresh market research .
U.S. residents were unable to access TikTok for about 14 hours from overdue Saturday into Sunday after a federal law aimed at curbing China’s alleged influence over the app took effect and triggered an unprecedented incident of internet censorship in a country that values free speech. According to data, about 63 percent of American teenagers and one-third of U.S. adults employ TikTok Pew Research Center.
Among the places where some of them took refuge was Likee, a TikTok clone launched by profitable Singaporean tech company Joyy in 2017. As of November, Likee had about 33.9 million monthly users, most of whom were outside the United States. However, according to data from Likee, there were 143 percent more downloads and 37 percent more users in the US on Saturday than the previous day. Sensory Towerwhich estimates numbers based on data from a sample of devices. This trend continued until Sunday, when Likee usage increased by 11 percent compared to the day before.
Estimates from Apptopia, another app industry research firm, show that Likee had seen fewer than 10,000 daily downloads in the U.S. for months, rising to nearly 167,000 on Sunday and about 286,000 on Monday. Apptopia also estimated similar increases for TikTok competitors Clapper and Flip.
Shares of Likee’s parent company, Joyy, fell about 3 percent on Tuesday, outpacing the average gain among Nasdaq-listed companies. Gleeful NO trounced Likee’s bottom line, but it and some of its sibling apps generated a combined roughly $73 million in sales from advertising and user purchases in the third quarter of last year. Likee did not respond to a request for comment.
Other lesser-used apps, including Clapper and Snap’s Snapchat, received increased attention over the weekend as user activity increased by double digits. TikTok’s biggest rivals, Instagram and Facebook Meta, saw more modest, single-digit losses. Meanwhile, YouTube and X saw little change in usage.
RedNote, another Chinese app that Americans 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. Over 700,000 fresh users joined RedNote in the first two days of the rush at the beginning of the week, Reuters reported. Known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, it has been the most downloaded free app on the Google and Apple app stores in the US in recent days.
TikTok returned to the U.S. internet on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump promised to temporarily suspend the fresh law when he took power the next day. A statute signed last year by former President Biden effectively bans TikTok, threatening financial penalties to hosting providers and app stores that work with its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, unless it divests ownership of TikTok. Users returned to TikTok en masse on Sunday, with the number of daily dynamic users up 17 percent compared to Saturday, Sensor Tower data shows.
On Monday, Trump issued an executive order providing 75 additional days to resolve the TikTok dilemma. However, the legality of his executive order remains in question, and TikTok is still unavailable in US app stores. However, when users search for TikTok, they are greeted by a list of alternatives – such as Likee, Clapper and others.