TikTok creators mourn app where ‘overnight’ success is possible

For internet entertainer Erika Thompson, TikTok is the most powerful website to educate her 11 million followers about her passion in life: bees.

The loss of the platform in the US – which came after the Supreme Court upheld the ban which will be implemented next week – will be a “benefit” financially for Ms Thompson, a beekeeper from Texas, as well as a loss of income. a teaching tool.

“There are many other people on the platform who provide educational or informative content,” he told the BBC. “It’s a huge loss and that’s what needs to be looked at, beyond the financial aspect, it’s a loss that we as a community – the people who use TikTok – will really feel.”

About 170 million Americans use this app and website. Unless its Chinese-based company ByteDance sells the platform or an intervention comes from a higher branch, the platform is expected to be dark in the US on Sunday.

The fate of the social media giant has been left in the hands of the US Supreme Court after Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted to block the video-sharing app last year, citing concerns over its ties to the Chinese government and concerns that the app is one-upmanship. a national security threat.

TikTok has repeatedly said it does not share information with Beijing.

But users and creators say that the social network is growing rapidly – and has helped regular users to become more familiar with millions of followers. Quickly becoming a favorite social media site for some and a source of income for others.

Now they are worried that the ban will not be lifted.

Creators who make money using social media told the BBC that TikTok is the most popular platform.

This was true for Thomspon whose first TikTok video received over 50 million views in the first 24 hours after it was uploaded.

“I haven’t had the same success on other platforms,” ​​he said. “I can post the same video on Instagram, for example, without getting even close to the boyfriend.”

Ross Smith, who shares funny videos with his 98-year-old grandmother to more than 24 million followers on TikTok, described it as one of the few platforms where it’s easy to be creative.

On TikTok, he said, “you can become successful overnight”.

Other platforms that have tried to replicate the short-form video format available on TikTok have yet to find success, Smith told the BBC. Mrs. Thompson agreed.

“I don’t like to hear about people who are viral on Instagram or someone who has an Instagram influencer but this is a phrase you often hear on TikTok,” Thompson said.

Codey James, a fashionista with thousands of followers on TikTok, told the BBC that audiences don’t migrate from one platform to another.

“I know someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and maybe only ten thousand followers on Instagram,” James told the BBC.

Most creators survive on the money they earn on TikTok.

Some told the BBC that their lives would change dramatically without the platform.

When companies and companies want ads from a producer, they want the producer to post on TikTok, Nicole Bloomgarden, a fashion designer and artist, told the BBC.

“Indirectly, TikTok was the biggest source of income for me because all the brands wanted their content to be uploaded on the app,” Bloomgarden said.

It is not clear if the most profitable source for creators is TikTok, but many told the BBC that it makes up a large part of their income.

2022 research from startups focused on developers Linktreefound 12% of full-time creators make more than $50,000 a year from their social media.

Another 46% said they made less than $1,000, the survey of 9,500 people found.

This is not the first time that a major social media platform has gone down.

In 2017, Vine – a platform where users could share videos of up to six minutes – shut down.

For creators at the time, it was a shock.

Q Park, a content creator with 37.7 million followers on TikTok, was one of those people.

He spent years building a following on Vine – the only platform he was using at the time – and when it disappeared, he said “it felt like my whole business was shutting down”.

But in some ways, it was good for him, too. It forced him to learn to create different things for different audiences.

“This experience showed me that if you believe you can create something, you will create followers elsewhere,” Park told the BBC.

As the ban approaches, some developers have started flocking to another Chinese platform, RedNote – a TikTok competition popular with young people in China, Taiwan and other Mandarin-speaking countries.

RedNote was the most downloaded app on Apple’s US App Store earlier this week.

While some producers are changing where they ship in the hope that the audience will increase elsewhere, others hope that the ban will not happen.

“TikTok is a monster,” Park said. “Part of me thinks it might be too big to fail.”

“It’s going to be revived in some way, it’s a lot of money now.”

Additional reporting from Grace Dean and Nathalie Jimenez.