Social media apps are becoming increasingly popular among American Teenagers. The likes of Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok are very popular in the U.S. According to reports, TikTok recently surpassed Instagram to become the second most favorite social media application for American teenagers.
According to Piper Sandler’s data, the Chinese short video app is currently second only to Snap’s Snapchat among American teenagers. The report found that 34% of teenagers ranked Snapchat as their favorite social application, followed by 29% of people choosing TikTok. Behind Snapchat and TikTok is Facebook’s Instagram. Only 25% of teenagers choose it as their favorite social application. In Piper Sandler’s Spring 2020 report, the Chinese short video app ranks third. According to the report, the actual usage is a different story. In this regard, Instagram still ranks first with 84% engagement, followed by Snapchat with 80% engagement and TikTok with 69%.
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The report shows that TikTok continues to gain market share among young American users. These users are a key group of social applications. They are the next key group of advertisers, and advertisers are the main source of income for social applications.
In order to tackle the threat from TikTok, Facebook released TikTok’s imitation version of Reels in August. This app allows users to make short video clips, allowing them to lip-sync, dance, or perform sketches. However, Reels is not gaining as much traction as Facebook is expecting.
TikTok collaborates with Oracle in the U.S.
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance. Last month, President Trump approved a deal that allows Oracle and Wal-Mart to acquire 20% of the company. Oracle will be in charge of the data of Americans on the Chinese app.
The U.S. government has been worried about American user data being held in Chinese servers. However, the new deal completely takes away the data of American users from the Chinese company. The app provides its usual services. Nevertheless, for American users, everything data goes through Oracle. This way, TikTok does not directly have access to American user data and it gets to keep its business in the U.S.
Recall that the Chinese short video app was at the brink of a ban before it came up with this solution. For several weeks, it was in negotiations with Microsoft and Oracle. Microsoft was pushing for an outright purchase of TikTok. However, the company did not want to sell thus the deal did not pull through.
