'Vulnerable to This Bullshit': The Tick, TikTok of Competitors
SCOOP: Meta is luring Gen Z and younger through a third-party agency, with more $ if they appear in marketing, while Substack tells me they're at an all-time user high
Come back next week for my exclusive interview with Hot Ones host Sean Evans and YouTube creators Rhett & Link, and if you’re at Sundance, sign up to attend the panel I’m moderating on Saturday at UTA House where a smart group of panelists including TikTok creator Jordan Howlett, producer Dan Cogan, Adobe CMO Heather Freeland and UTA partner Julian Jacobs will be discussing the intersection of brands and entertainment.
Did you catch it? The TikTok ban, I mean. The app powered down for a mere 14 hours overnight this weekend, only to reappear Sunday morning with the following greeting: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!” Never mind that Trump wouldn’t be sworn in as president for another 24 hours, or that legal scholars are already questioning the legality of the 75-day reprieve he swiftly granted TikTok via executive order.
It was rather anticlimactic. TikTok’s powerful algorithm, its scores of industrious creators, its 170 million U.S. users — it all went poof! And somehow life continued on, IRL and in the digital realm. Of course, some creators were distraught. Alix Earle, who rose to fame during her college years for her relatable girl-next-door makeup tutorials, posted several tearful videos in the hours leading up to the shutdown, bemoaning the loss of the app to her 7.2 million followers. “I’m just so sad,” she said in one TikTok that notched 4.5 million views. “As much as I love posting stuff, I love consuming it as well.”
Loren Gray says goodbye to TikTok:
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But her agent was never really worried. “We’ve seen platforms come and go, and we’ve seen talent stay around longer than a platform,” Ali Berman, co-head of UTA Creators, tells me. “Certainly it’s an emotional time for so many clients, and I take that to heart, but we’ve always believed you’re bigger than any one platform.”
No one seems to know that better than TikTok’s rivals, many of which were busy this weekend trying to create thirst traps for displaced creators. “Instagram Reels stands to win the most,” says a top dealmaker of the volatility. Indeed, on Sunday, before TikTok sputtered back to life, the Meta-owned platform revealed a new video editing app, Edits, that looks suspiciously similar to CapCut, an app operated by ByteDance that was also shut down as part of the TikTok ban.
Behind the scenes, Instagram had also begun reaching out to reps of some top TikTok creators, offering them five-figure monthly cash incentives to post to Reels, as The Information first reported and multiple sources confirmed to me. I’m told by one source that Meta is asking for a window of exclusivity for the videos these creators post on Instagram and Facebook and generally expects them to post more regularly on its platforms than, say, TikTok. Content deals aren’t new to Meta, but this person adds that Instagram has focused these deals, which are being brokered by a third-party marketing agency, on a select group of top creators, many of them Gen Z or younger.
There’s even more money to be had if a TikToker agrees to let Meta use their videos as part of a larger marketing push. Though my sources wouldn’t disclose who’s accepted these deals, Instagram’s own Insta account has in the last two days promoted videos from a handful of creators, including Bella Poarch and Quenlin Blackwell, better known for their TikToks under the campaign hashtag #CreativityNeverStops. Even more notable, a Reel from queen of TikTok herself, Charli D’Amelio. She’s been noticeably quiet on TikTok in recent days. Separately, Instagram said it plans to offer $5,000 bonuses to TikTok creators who join Facebook and Instagram for the first time.
“There’s always opportunity in a crisis,” Berman says.
Charli D’Amelio on Instagram:
Who’s Chasing the ‘Fucking Billions of People’ on TikTok
It’s not just Meta. “This is a great moment” for YouTube Shorts, says CAA’s Andrew Graham, who leads business development for the agency’s digital media division. The Google-owned video platform’s pandemic-era TikTok clone — in spite of its 2 billion monthly users as of 2023 — still doesn’t generate the same attention as TikTok. Not content to sit on the sidelines, Snapchat has also been making a play. Last week it launched a new marketing campaign featuring the tagline “Find your favorites on Snapchat” featuring popular TikTokers Avani Gregg, Loren Gray and Matt Friend. Another source says creators who’ve been posting to Snapchat in the past week have seen an uptick in both viewership and monetization.
A new app has also burst onto the American scene. Chinese-owned RedNote rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts as TikTok users sought a new vehicle for the quick-hit adrenaline of short videos. RedNote reportedly added some 500,000 U.S. users in the days leading up to the TikTok ban, but my sources believe it’s just a fad. “We’ve been quite explicit that onboarding onto an app called RedNote, which is a nod to Chairman Mao’s book of collective quotes, is not going to land well in the current political climate,” says one. “That is not a solution.”
A view from RedNote:
Another company hoping to offer a solution is Substack. Though it’s a less obvious alternative for TikTokers, the OG newsletter platform (that I’m publishing on here) has been doubling down on efforts to bring more video creators into its ecosystem through the introduction of video podcasts and live broadcasts. In the lead-up to the TikTok ban, it offered a $25,000 “TikTok Liberation Prize” to the creator who gained the most traction through a TikTok inspiring others to join the platform. The honor was ultimately awarded to journalist Aaron Parnas, who’s been posting his “Gen Z perspective” to Substack for some time.
For a brief moment over the weekend, it seemed like Substack was gaining traction as the app shot to No. 1 in Apple’s chart of top news apps. (It’s now No. 4 behind X and Reddit, but a spokeswoman says it’s seeing all time highs for daily active users.) Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie tells me the effects of the TikTok ban have been sizable. “There’s so many people on there, fucking billions of people,” he marvels. Of the opportunity created by the TikTok outage, he adds, “As much as it’s about trying to capitalize on the moment, it’s about helping creators understand the importance of owning their relationship with their audience, so that they don’t have to be vulnerable to this kind of bullshit.”
Diversify Your Content, 'Diversifying Risk'
There’s still a very real possibility that TikTok could be disappeared from the U.S. for good. The law Trump stalled directs owner ByteDance to sell the app to a non-Chinese company, or it will be banned, and amid the limbo it’s not available in the Apple or Google app stores. All the reps I spoke with have essentially been counseling clients to keep calm and carry on as the fate of TikTok plays out on the geopolitical stage.
There’s no question the loss of TikTok would deal a massive blow to creators. It’s one of the only platforms today where someone can go from obscurity to viral fame literally overnight. One source estimates that for the average creator, about 30 percent of revenue could come from endorsement deals on TikTok.
One reason the response to the ban felt so restrained is that many of the creators most closely associated with TikTok barely seemed to notice that it might be going away. D’Amelio, for instance, is busy promoting her starring role in the Broadway musical & Juliet, though she still added more than 1 million new followers on TikTok on the eve of the ban. Addison Rae (she of the Rolling Stone cover that dropped yesterday) spent last year touring with Charli XCX. She posted only a single short message calling TikTok a “transformative arc in the story of my life.” These voices are shining examples of how to leverage an online audience into something much more expansive, but they’ve somewhat outgrown the app that first made them famous. “It would be really sad to [see it] go,” Rae told Rolling Stone, “but hopefully the things that I create and put out surpass that platform.”
Everyone else, if they’ve been smart, has already established accounts (and been making money) on Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat too. “We’ve always focused on having our creators diversify their content,” says Michael Berkowitz, a partner at management firm Greenlight, which works with TikTokers like Jordan Howlett. “It’s really important to have an audience on multiple platforms. Not only do you reach different types of folks, but you can also charge better rates for partnership opportunities, and you’re diversifying risk.”
Whatever TikTok’s ultimate fate, the 14-hour ban demonstrated how quickly audiences will follow their favorite creators wherever they are. CAA’s Graham tells me that client Danae Hays, who has attracted more than 3 million followers on TikTok through her comedy videos, saw her Instagram following jump by more than 60,000 after she pointed fans there in the lead up to the ban. “The [other] platforms are certainly the winners,” he says.
It’s adding to the mounting evidence that hmmm, maybe creators don’t need TikTok that much after all. Even Earle, whose grief over the ban seemed sincere, was quick to jump to Instagram, where she went live to mourn. And when TikTok returned just a few hours later, he response seemed muted. “So you’re telling me that I just spent the last two days crying on here and now this app is back,” she said in between laughs in her first post-ban video. “Honestly, like, could we have stayed away for another day or so? Because I really made this a big deal.”