President Trump is trying out TikTok’s competitor, Triller in a two-fold attempt to get your vote in November and continue to squeeze TikTok out.
His campaign developed a profile for him on Saturday and uploaded its first video.
Donald Trump has launched an official profile on TikTok competitor Triller https://t.co/n5g9YDXqnB pic.twitter.com/hcr7goziDO
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) August 15, 2020
That 15 second video featured the President touting his technological prowess.
By Sunday afternoon, the video had 1.2 million views.
Following that video, the campaign posted 2 additional videos about presumptive Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden.
Trump gained nearly 6,000 followers in his first day on Triller.
U.S. President Donald Trump now has a verified account on TikTok competitor Triller, another sign of the White House’s disfavor toward the ByteDance-owned video-sharing app. #MNewsWorld #MNews pic.twitter.com/jmDnlecY0s
— M.News World (@mnews_world) August 16, 2020
What is Triller?
Introduced in 2015, Triller is older than TikTok but considerably less popular.
Triller boasts 65 million users.
It is a US-based company owned by Proxima Media.
Users are encouraged to make music videos and share them on the platform.
Triller does most of the editing for the user.
Last month, Triller acquired Halogen Networks, an app that offers live streaming and on demand content.
TikTok
TikTok originated in 2016
It is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, who bought the app Music.ly prior to launching TikTok.
The number of users is large but reports vary on specifically how many there are.
500 million users is what ByteDance officially reported in July 2018.
The company has not updated that number; however, 800 million seems to be a more accurate figure as of August 2020.
Like other online communities, #TikTok controls and manages numerous privacy from users. The reason that it is banned by the government would be 1. the number of users and information flow of #TikTok is increasing in an unbelievable way. (1/2)
— Wendell Tsui (@WennongCui) August 9, 2020
In 2019, the app was downloaded 738 million times.
It is available in over 150 markets and 39 languages.
President Trump and TikTok
President Trump believes TikTok (largely because of its Chinese ownership) is a threat to data privacy in the United States.
For that reason, he signed an executive order banning the app if it is not sold to a US based company by September.
Rumors persist that Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok which currently employs 1,500 people in the US but plans to grow that number to 10,000.
In the meantime, TikTok has said it plans to go to court to fight the executive order if it becomes necessary to do so.
TikTok also fast-tracked its Creators Fund allocations and has begun paying selected US-based creators for their content.
Triller vs. TikTok
Triller is attempting to market itself as the alternative to TikTok in the midst of TikTok’s turmoil with the President of the United States.
It shares characteristics with TikTok, but it is more focused on music videos.
In contrast, TikTok has a wide array of video content including cooking, photography, and makeup tips to name a few.
TikTok also allows the user to edit the video and offers a wide array of editing tools.
Other TikTok Competitors – Byte, Reels, and Clash
Triller isn’t the only app trying to fill TikTok’s shoes.
Other up-and-comers include:
Byte is invented by the creator of Vine which many say was the original TikTok.
For whatever reason, Twitter purchased Vine and within one year after the sale, it disappeared.
Vine had 500 million users in 2015 but was gone in 2016.
Some are calling Byte, Vine 2.
It allows 6 second videos to be uploaded but lacks some of the TikTok user effects.
Reels is owned by Facebook and offers Facebook-owned Instagram as the location to create loop videos.
Clash is still in beta mode; however, one of its principal priorities is to create monetizing opportunities for creators immediately.
Mobile video-sharing apps will only increase in popularity with the political attention that is now focused on TikTok.
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