Singapore company Likee is the unlikely winner of the TikTok ban

Panic over the TikTok ban in the US has led to increased usage and downloads of a slew of alternative social media apps, including Texas-based and Chinese-owned Clapper. rednoteand Laiki, A Unknown platform from Singapore using an AI-powered video feed similar to TikTok, according to new market research.

People in The United States has not been able to access TikTok For about 14 hours late Saturday into Sunday after a federal law intended to limit China’s alleged influence over the app took effect and sparked an unprecedented incident of internet censorship in a country that values ​​freedom of expression. According to TikTok, about 63% of American teens and one-third of US adults use TikTok Pew Research Center.

Among the places some of them turned was Likee, a version of TikTok launched by profitable Singaporean tech company Joyy in 2017. Likee had about 33.9 million monthly users as of November, most of them outside the United States. But on Saturday, Likee attracted a 143 percent increase in downloads and a 37 percent increase in usage in the United States compared to the previous day, according to Sensor towerwhich estimates numbers by collecting data from a sample of devices. This trend continued until Sunday, when Likee usage rose 11% from the previous day.

Estimates from Apptopia, another company that studies the app industry, show that over a period of months, Likee recorded fewer than 10,000 downloads per day in the United States before jumping to roughly 167,000 on Sunday and about 286,000 on Monday. Apptopia also estimated similar bumps to TikTok’s competitors, Clapper and Flip.

On Tuesday, shares of Likee’s parent company, Joyy, closed up about 3 percent, outpacing the average gain among its Nasdaq peers. aerial no Likee’s financials were crushed, but it and some of its other sister apps generated $73 million in sales during the third quarter of last year from ads and user purchases. Likee did not respond to a request for comment.

Other less frequented apps, including Clapper and Snap’s Snapchat, attracted increased attention over the weekend to reach double-digit gains in user activity. TikTok’s biggest rivals, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, saw more modest single-digit boosts. Meanwhile, YouTube and X saw little change in usage.

RedNote, another Chinese app owned by Americans They flocked to In protest during the days leading up to the ban, the number of users increased by 80 percent on Sunday compared to the previous day, according to Sensor Tower. In the first two days of the peak earlier in the week, more than 700,000 new users joined RedNote, Reuters reported. Known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, the app has in recent days ranked as the most downloaded free app on the Google and Apple app stores in the United States.

TikTok is back online in the United States on Sunday after President-elect Donald Trump promised to offer a temporary reprieve to the new law when he took office the next day. The law, signed by former President Biden last year, effectively bans TikTok by threatening fines on web hosting providers and app stores that work with its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, unless it divests its ownership in TikTok. Users returned to TikTok in droves on Sunday, with the number of daily active users up 17 percent compared to Saturday, according to Sensor Tower data.

on monday, Trump issued an executive order Providing an additional 75 days to resolve your TikTok dilemma. But the legality of his decree remains in doubt, and TikTok remains unavailable in US app stores. But when users search for TikTok, they are greeted by a list of alternatives, likee, Clapper, and others among them.