TikTok Traffic Rapidly Rebounds After US-Based Split-Off

Photo Credit: Solen Feyissa

TikTok has mostly recovered from its dip in active users in the days immediately following its US ownership change, according to the latest data.

According to data from digital market intelligence firm Similarweb, TikTok has mostly recovered from the usage dip it experienced in the days immediately following its ownership change to a consortium of American investors in the United States.

The brief decline, due in part to service outages that data giant Oracle says resulted from the onslaught of bad weather in much of the country, served as a boon for competing apps like UpScrolled, RedNote, and Skylight Social.

Similarweb estimates that TikTok saw usage decline to around 86-88 million daily active users in the U.S. immediately following the ownership switch, compared with an average of 92 million daily active users.

Now, the platform has largely bounced back, showing over 90 million daily active users. That indicates that many who fled TikTok in the first few days of the transition have since come back.

TikTok’s usage decline actually didn’t seem to be directly driven by its ownership change, but by concerns of how that change might impact users’ experience on the platform. Notably, there was a surge in concerns surrounding TikTok’s updated privacy policy—but that change was actually implemented well ahead of the ownership change.

Users also balked at the reset of the highly coveted For You page algorithm, which showed users default content upon the ownership switch until the new algorithm was given time to learn its users’ preferences. This, perhaps more than anything, encouraged users to try other services since they felt as if they were already having to start over on TikTok.

But the multi-day data center outage really put a nail in the TikTok experience, which caused the app to not function properly, sometimes breaking likes, comments, search, and uploads. As a result, many users suspected TikTok was actually censoring their content—leading to California Governor Gavin Newsom to announce the launch of an investigation into whether TikTok is violating California state law.

Meanwhile, TikTok’s smaller competitors saw rapid growth during that dip, with UpScrolled topping 138,500 daily active users at its peak on January 28. Now, that number is back down to 68,000.

Similarly, the open-source alternative Skylight Social hit a peak of 81,200 daily active users, which has since dropped to 56,300. The platform reported seeing its user sign-ups increase to 380,000 in late January.