TikTok says it has 170 million users in the US who, on average, spent 51 minutes per day on the app in 2024.
Ban TikTok or make it less usable and that creates a huge opportunity for its big tech rivals says Jasmine Enberg, analyst at Insider Intelligence.
“Meta-owned Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, owned by Google, are the most natural fits for displaced users, creators, and advertisers,” she says.
Facebook could benefit too, though Ms Enberg says, in common with all Meta platforms, the controversial policy changes announced by boss Mark Zuckerberg could potentially lessen its appeal.
Users bring advertisers – so a ban could be a big financial boost to those platforms.
“Chief Marketing Officers who we’ve spoken with confirmed that they will divert their media dollars to Meta and Google if they can no longer advertise on TikTok – this is the same behaviour we saw in India when they banned TikTok in 2020”, said Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering.
Lemon8, which is also owned by ByteDance, would have been an obvious place for people to go following a ban – but the law stipulates it also applies to other apps owned or operated by the firm. This means Lemon8 is probably also going to face being made inaccessible in the US.
Other potential winners include Twitch, which made its name on hosting livestreams – a popular feature on TikTok. Twitch is well known particularly to gamers, though it continues to grow with other content.
Other Chinese-owned platforms, such as Xiaohongshu – known as RedNote among its US users – have seen rapid growth in the US and the UK.
Still, some suggest no existing app can truly replace TikTok, in particular its feature TikTok Shop, which lets users purchase products directly from videos, and makes a lot of money for US creators.
Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3, said there was no direct competitor that people could easily switch to – and notes his agency was signing new contracts with clients to build TikTok Shop campaigns as late as December.