In January, the US terminated the agreement to create a separate entity for TikTok. A US-based investor consortium called TikTok USDS took a controls an 80% stakewith the remaining 20% ​​ownership held by ByteDance.

After the deal ended – which coincided with the snow storm – users experienced glitches in the features like posting, search within the appslower load times, and time-outs. TikTok noted that creators may see zero views on their posts until the problem is resolved. Later, the company said it was working to solve the issue, but outages persist, and users face problems posting content.

TikTok’s transition to a new ownership structure, coupled with app snafu and user experience glitches, is beneficial for other social networks. Mark Cuban-backed short video app Skylight, built on the AT protocol, has seen its user base grow to more than 380,000 users in the week the deal was done. Upscrolled, a social network by Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist Issam Hijazi, also climbed the App Store rankings to reach second place in the social media category in the US. downloaded 41,000 times within days of the TikTok deal closing, according to analyst firm AppFigures.