“Welcome back to Triller.”
You may have never logged into Triller, the shortform video platform created by Triller Corp. that once rivaled TikTok. But that you might be a returning customer is a good guess – the United States has scheduled a nationwide ban on TikTok on Jan. 19. As users look for alternatives, Triller soared more than 100 spots on the Apple App download chart as of Jan. 14, the company said on Tuesday.
Hollywood-based Triller is aware it is the second choice to TikTok, and is welcoming (or welcoming back, in some cases) creators with open arms. The company launched SaveMyTikToks.com, which will allow TikTokers to upload their videos to Triller.
“After listening to creators, it became clear there was a very real concern that the content they had spent so much time and resources creating could just disappear,” Sean Kim, the chief executive of Triller, said in a statement. “Creators are the foundation of Triller and we are dedicated to protecting their livelihoods, so we quickly came up with a solution to not only save their content, but easily move it to a new home in the Triller app.”
Once upon a time, it looked like Triller didn’t need intervention from the U.S. government to eclipse TikTok. In 2020, the company was reaching unicorn status with a $100 million deal valuing the company at a $1.25 billion. Triller also had the same number of users TikTok did before the latter was acquired by China-based ByteDance in 2017 for an estimated $1 billion.
India banned TikTok that year, and Triller quickly became the third most popular photo and video app in the country. The U.S. was looking into doing the same – it launched an investigation into ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly (now TikTok) in 2019, and several military entities banned the app on government-issued smartphones in 2020. India and the U.S. cited national security concerns regarding Chinese ownership of the Singapore-based company.
But after years of back-and-forth conversations, it’s still unclear if TikTok’s ban in the U.S. will last. President-elect Donald Trump asked in late December that the Supreme Court to pause the law that would require ByteDance to either sell or remove TikTok from the U.S., and he has reported positive feelings about the app.
Nevertheless, Triller has trudged on. Though the company faced a litany of lawsuits which have been settled, it has raised around $600 million and, after several failed initial public offering bids, was bought in a deal worth $4 billion by AGBA Group Holding Ltd. in April 2024. Triller then went public in October and has seen its stock price decline ever since.
While it was once the most popular alternative to TikTok, Triller will face several competitors in the short-form vertical video space this time: Instagram began offering Reels in 2020 as the algorithm shifted from prioritizing photo content to video content, and YouTube launched Shorts in the U.S. in 2021 after incubating it in India.
