TikTok creators mourn the app where ‘overnight’ success is possible

For online sensation Erica Thompson, TikTok is the most powerful social media platform for educating her 11 million followers about her life’s passion: bees.

The loss of the platform in the US – made more possible after the Supreme Court upheld the ban due to go into effect next week – would be financially “robust” for Texas beekeeper Ms Thompson, but it is also the loss of an educational one. equipment.

“There are a lot of other people on the platform offering educational content or informational content,” he told the BBC. “This is the biggest loss and what should be focused on beyond the financial aspect is the loss that we as a society – the people who use TikTok – will certainly feel.”

About 170 million Americans use the app and website. Unless its China-based parent company ByteDance sells the platform or there is intervention from the executive branch, the platform will shut down in the US on Sunday.

The fate of the social media giant was left in the hands of the US Supreme Court after both Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted to ban the video-sharing app last year over concerns about its ties to the Chinese government and the app. There were concerns about. National security risk.

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

But users and content creators say the social media platform has become a fixture in society – and has helped regular users rise to the spotlight with millions of followers. It has rapidly become a favorite social media outlet for some and a major revenue source for others.

Now they are worried about what will happen if the ban is not stopped.

Creators who earn a living from social media apps told BBC that TikTok is a great platform.

This was true for Ms Thomson, whose first TikTok video received more than 50 million views in the first 24 hours after it was posted.

“I haven’t experienced the same success on other platforms,” ​​he said. “For example, I can post the exact same video to Instagram, and not get even close to the engagement.”

Ross Smith, who shares funny videos with his 98-year-old grandmother on TikTok to his more than 24 million followers, has described it as one of the few platforms where it is easy to become a creator.

“You can be an overnight success,” he said on TikTok.

Mr Smith told the BBC that other platforms trying to replicate the short-form scroll format displayed on TikTok have not yet had success. Ms. Thompson agreed.

“I rarely hear about people going viral on Instagram or someone being an Instagram sensation, but these are words you hear frequently on TikTok,” Ms Thompson said.

Cody James, a fashion influencer with thousands of followers on TikTok, told the BBC that audiences don’t necessarily shift from one platform to another.

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

Many content creators make their living from the income they earn on TikTok.

Some people told the BBC that their lives would be dramatically different without the platform.

When brands and companies want advertising content from a creator, they want that creator to post on TikTok, fashion designer and artist Nicole Bloomgarden told the BBC.

“Indirectly, TikTok was a big part of my income because all brands want their content promoted on the app,” Ms. Bloomgarden said.

Statistically it’s not clear whether TikTok is the most lucrative source of income for creators, but many told the BBC it accounts for a large portion of their revenue.

2022 Survey of Creator-Centric Startups linktreefound that about 12% of full-time creators earned more than $50,000 per year from their social media platforms.

The survey of 9,500 people revealed that about 46% said they made less than $1,000.

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

In 2017, Vine – a platform where users could share six-second long video clips – shut down.

This was a shock for the creators of that time.

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

He spent years building a following on Vine – at the time it was the only platform he used – 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. This forced them to learn how to create different content for different audiences.

“That experience showed me that if you’re confident in your ability to create content, you’ll build a following elsewhere,” Mr Park told the BBC.

As the ban gets closer, some creators have started moving to other Chinese platforms, rednote – a TikTok competitor popular among youth in China, Taiwan, and other Mandarin-speaking populations.

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

While some creators are diversifying posts in hopes of increasing viewership elsewhere, others are hoping the ban will not be successful.

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

“It will be revived somehow, it is a huge economy now.”

Additional reporting from Grace Dean and Nathalie Jimenez.