January 20, 2025
While the US has carried out its threat to ban TikTok – experts believe more countries could be next. What’s the impact for influencers and content creators…and how much will other platforms benefit?
A recent article by the BBC suggests TikTok may be turned off in other parts of the world. With national security at risk, it’s no surprise there may be a domino effect – much as there was with China’s Huawei and Russia’s Kaspersky. For the outsiders, it’s news…but for those who lean on TikTok for a living, the threat is real and scary – with loss of visibility and income no doubt at the forefront of their minds every minute of every day.
The time to pivot may be now. TikTok has been branded as almost a content platform rather than a social one – and we can see why. Some recommend switching to YouTube and leaning on shorts to keep content flowing, but the video platform still tends to attract long-form creators for now, rather than the shorter form. ‘Shorts’ themselves are gathering traction, but still fall behind stories.
Is Meta the answer?
The default for content creators may be to turn to Instagram – although many do actually post content on both platforms already. 170m in audience is a huge loss for the US market – the UK one is smaller of course, but for those who focus on UK-centric comedy content or product reviews, sightseeing and travel – the threat of a shutdown TikTok will be real.
The challenge is staying relevant – Instagram and TikTok are arguably in a league of their own right now and taking 50% of that away means a small space to work in. How will this impact on algorithms? What about ad spend for brands? Could this be a new gold mine for Meta?
We’ll have to wait and see!
A caveat…
It’s worth saying however, at this point, that incoming US president Donald Trump opposes the TikTok ban…so this blog may be out of date sooner than we think! For now it stands though, and there is limited time left for users to strut their stuff on the platform.
Are you worried about TikTok’s ban in the UK and how it may impact on your work? Chat to us today, we’ve some thoughts…