Panic over the US ban on TikTok has boosted use and downloads of alternative social media apps, including Texas-based Clapper, China-owned RedNote, and Likee, a little-known platform from Singapore with AI-powered video feeds similar to TikTok, according to new market research. People in the US were unable to access TikTok for about 14 hours from Saturday to Sunday following a federal law aimed at curbing alleged Chinese influence. through the app became an effect and triggered an unprecedented incident of internet censorship in a country that prizes free expression. About 63 percent of US teenagers and a third of US adults use TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center. Among the places where some have taken refuge is Likee, a TikTok clone launched by for-profit 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 attracted 143 percent more downloads and 37 percent more usage in the US than the previous day, according to Sensor Tower, which estimated the numbers by collecting data from a sample of devices. That trend continued into Sunday, when Likee usage rose 11 percent from the previous day. Estimates from Apptopia, another company that studies the app industry, show that for months, Likee recorded fewer than 10,000 downloads a day in the US before jumping to nearly 167,000 on Sundays and about 286,000 on Mondays. Apptopia also estimates a similar bump for TikTok competitors Clapper and Flip. On Tuesday, shares of Likee’s parent company Joyy closed down about 3 percent, outpacing the average gain among its Nasdaq peers. Joyy hasn’t hurt Likee financially, but it and several other sister apps generated about $73 million in sales during the third quarter last year from ads and user purchases. Likee did not respond to a request for comment. Other less frequent apps, including Clapper and Snap’s Snapchat, attracted increased interest over the weekend with a double-digit gain in user activity. TikTok’s biggest rivals, Instagram and Facebook Meta, saw more modest single-digit increases. YouTube and X, meanwhile, experienced little change in usage. RedNote, another Chinese app that Americans have flocked to protest the day before the ban, added 80 percent more users 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, these days it is the most downloaded free app in the Google and Apple app stores in the US. of the new law when taking power the next day. The law, signed by former President Biden last year, effectively banned TikTok by threatening to prosecute web hosting providers and app stores that work with its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, unless they divest their holdings in TikTok. Users returned to TikTok on Sunday, with daily active users up 17 percent on Saturday, Sensor Tower data showed. On Monday, Trump issued an executive order providing an additional 75 days to resolve the dilemma regarding TikTok. But the legality of the decision remains in question, and TikTok is still not available in the US app store. But when users search for TikTok, they are greeted with a list of alternatives—Likee, Clapper, and more.
