Singapore’s Likee Is an Unlikely Winner of the TikTok Ban

Fears over a US ban on TikTok have boosted usage and downloads of Texas-based Clapper, one of the Chinese-owned alternative social media apps. Rednoteand Likee, a A lesser known platform Singapore is out with an AI-powered video feed like TikTok, according to new market research.

people in Couldn’t access US TikTok for about 14 hours from late Saturday to Sunday after a federal law aimed at curbing China’s alleged influence over the app went into effect and triggered an unprecedented case of internet censorship in a country that prizes free expression. About 63 percent of U.S. teens and a third of U.S. adults use TikTok, according to Pew Research Center.

Among the places some of them have taken refuge is Likee, a TikTok clone launched in 2017 by the profitable Singaporean tech company Joy. Likee had about 33.9 million monthly users as of November, most of them outside the United States. But on Saturday, Like had 143 percent more downloads and 37 percent more usage than the previous day, Sensor towerwhich collects data from a sample of devices and infers statistics. This trend continued into Sunday, when usage of Likes increased by 11 percent from a day earlier.

Estimates from Apptopia, another company that studies the app industry, show that, for months, Likei has recorded fewer than 10,000 downloads per day in the US, peaking at about 167,000 on Sundays and about 286,000 on Mondays. Aptopia has estimated similar hurdles for TikTok competitors Clapper and Flip.

Shares of Joy, Like’s parent company, closed up nearly 3 percent on Tuesday, outpacing the average gain among its Nasdaq peers. victory no Break down Like’s financials, but it and its other sibling apps collectively generated about $73 million in sales from advertising and user purchases in the third quarter of last year. Like did not respond to requests for comment.

Other less-frequent apps, including Clapper and Snap’s Snapchat, saw double-digit gains in user activity over the weekend. TikTok’s biggest rivals, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, saw more modest single-digit boosts. Meanwhile, usage of YouTube and X has changed little.

RedNote, another Chinese app owned by Americans flocked to In contrast to the days before the ban, Sunday added 80 percent more users than the previous day, according to Sensor Tower. In the first two days of the rush earlier in the week, more than 700,000 new users joined RedNote, Reuters reported. Known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, it has been ranked as the most downloaded free app on the Google and Apple app stores in the US in recent days.

TikTok is back online In the United States on Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump promised a temporary repeal of the new law after taking office the next day. The law, signed by former President Biden last year, effectively banned TikTok by threatening to fine web hosting providers and app stores that work with its parent company, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, unless it divests its ownership of TikTok. Users returned to TikTok on Sunday, with a 17 percent increase in daily active users compared to Saturday, Sensor Tower data showed.

monday, Trump issued an executive order An additional 75 days is being given to resolve the dispute with TikTok. But the validity of his decree remains in question and TikTok is still unavailable in US app stores. But when users search for TikTok, they’re greeted by a list of options—likes, clappers, and others in between.