There is a rising tide of uncertainty surrounding the future of TikTok in the U.S., and some of the app’s most popular creators have already jumped ship.
More recently, actor Josh Richards, 20, said he was leaving the app and encouraged his teens to transfer to Triller, a booming music video platform. Meanwhile, it was reported that other TikTok influencers were financially courted via Facebook to register for Reels, which were part of Instagram.
But will the fans move? Probably, but only so much, experts say.
“Every influencer has wonderful subscribers, and I think those wonderful enthusiasts stay with them in other apps,” said John Acunto, CEO of social media platform Tsu. “But it’s a fraction of the enthusiasts they have.”
Influencers have a lot of strength when it comes to entertaining other people on social networking sites.
They are the equivalent of social media actors on television, only influencers are also guilty of generating content for the public. The term influencer is infrequently used interchangeably with the content creator, valuable influencers have the strength to influence people’s buying habit or other actions.
But the amount of traction they have is complicated.
Drea Okeke is an American content author from Nigeria founded in Los Angeles.
It has more than 5.4 million TikTok subscribers. But those figures have not translated into other platforms, it has asked enthusiasts to follow it elsewhere.
“I still have 100,000 fans on Instagram. It’s a big difference with my fans at TikTok,” Okeke said. “It’s embarrassing, for example, why don’t you convert?”
Thanks to Okele and hundreds of other major TikTok influences, the platform was a unicorn that was the No. 1 grossing app on the iOS App Store globally during the first quarter of 2020, according to AppAnnie.
Since it merged with Musical.ly in 2018, creators have increasingly cranked out a wide range of comedic content set to music, winning over teens and young adults. The quick rise caught the attention of Facebook, which tried unsuccessfully to purchase Musical.ly years ago.
TikTok’s Facebook past, Lasso, failed.
“I’ve noticed that an app creates celebrities like TikTok created them in less than six months,” said Ariadna Jacob, owner of the marketing agency influenced by Influences.com.
Even if all of their subscribers become converted, social media stars have the daunting task of finding out which platforms are “great” and which are not respected, according to Elma Beganovich, who co-directs influential marketing firm A-E.
In 2016, before Facebook presented the Stories, content creators flooded Snapchat. Many of them have placed ghost icons on their Instagram biographies and suggested enthusiasts accompany them on the endangered photo platform.
“Influencers are necessarily to attract users to Snapchat,” Beganovich said.
Then, after Facebook introduced its edition of Stories, the influencers returned to a wider audience.
A new and luxurious app is a sufficient explanation for why to tell subscribers to check anything new, experts say.
More than anything, opportunities to generate profits through partnerships with brands or other corporations push high-level creators to other services. That’s why they’re looking to take their enthusiasts with them.
Several TikTok creative highlights, Josh Richards, Griffin Johnson and Noah Beck, have announced that they have opted for Triller, a 5-year-old artificial intelligence-based entertainment platform.
Richards is the director of execution strategy, while the other influencers are shareholders.
News of the update and higher calls to ban TikTok have increased Triller downloads. Overnight, it is the maximum app downloaded in several countries.
“If TikTok is banned, we’ll take his place,” said Mike Lu, Triller’s ceo. “This weekend, we saw literally exploiting our servers” when other people flocked to the platform.
Triller’s sudden expansion “organic,” Lu said, while Instagram would take another technique to convince influencers. Instagram is said to be paying influencers thousands of dollars to use its Reels feature, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A Facebook representative told USA TODAY that the company has “a long history of reaching out creators and running to break new stars on Instagram.” The corporation also stated that in “some cases” it will pay influencers to cover production costs.
The amount of money creators earn varies.
Microinfluencers with around 50,000 can start making money from brands, Jacob said. But mega-influencers with millions of subscribers can earn $10,000 or more according to the post, depending on the time and effort invested in generating content.
In July, TikTok presented a $200 million art fund for eligible influencers on the platform to make a living. TikTok said it expects the fund to succeed at more than $1 billion in the United States over the next 3 years.
“Wherever influencers go, user retention will increase and social platforms will actually sell more advertising,” Beganovich said.
Paying influencers to leave TikTok would hurt, experts say. But it’s too early to count TikTok. Amid the growing tension of the White House in TikTok, Microsoft has expressed its goal of purchasing the app, which can keep more American creators on the platform and more people watching the content.
Influencers and their marketing say uncertainty is frightening.
“It’s a very genuine fear right now, ” said Jacob of Influences.com. “If you spend all this time uploading your audience, TikTok will disappear, and you only have 500,000 fans on Instagram, you may not be able to make the same amount of money.”
The popularity of a platform not only has the other people who create the most watched content.
In fact, more people consume content that content produces on social media, according to experts. As a result, users play a more important role in creating new programs than stars that rate themselves to entertain others.
“There has to be something new on the platform to attract people,” Beganovich said. “You have to convince the first users that they will attract influencers who will then attract more followers.”
Follow Dalvin Brown on Twitter: @Dalvin_Brown.