Jesse Tinsley, CEO of a workforce management company, Employer.com, is conducting what could become the year’s wildest acquisition spree.
First, Employer.com announced its plan last month to acquire Bench, the Canadian accounting startup that abruptly shut down over the holidays.
Now, Tinsley and Employer.com have joined hands with YouTuber MrBeast and others to save TikTok by submitting an all-cash bid for the app, according to a report in Bloomberg.
They haven’t disclosed the bid’s amount. The group’s legal counsel includes Brad Bondi, the brother of Trump’s attorney general pick, Pam Bondi.
TikTok briefly went dark on Saturday but reinstated itself shortly before President Trump signed an executive order on Monday delaying any potential ban for 75 days.
It’s not clear if TikTok’s owner ByteDance has seriously considered the offer, Bloomberg reported. Others floated as potential buyers include Elon Musk, Amazon, Oracle, and a syndicate headed by billionaire Frank McCourt.
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Meta is luring TikTok creators over to its platforms with the promise of cash bonuses, content deals, and support to grow their communities. The company announced on Tuesday that eligible TikTok creators will be able to earn “up to” $5,000 in bonuses over three months for posting Reels on Facebook and Instagram.
These creators will also get access to the Facebook Content Monetization program, which allows creators to earn money for their videos, photos, and text posts on Facebook. Additionally, Meta will offer some TikTok creators content deals to help grow their audiences on Instagram and Facebook.
Some TikTok creators will also get a one-year trial of Meta Verified, which includes a verified badge, account support, and impersonation protection. (The company did not share the criteria for whose will receive access).
While TikTok is back online in the U.S. after going dark for 12 hours over the weekend, the ByteDance-owned social network is still missing from app stores. Although President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to delay the TikTok ban deadline by 75 days and told the Department of Justice not to enforce the ban’s penalties, it’s unknown when (or if) the app will return to Apple and Google’s app stores.
Meta is clearly taking advantage of TikTok’s current troubles by poaching and attracting some of the service’s creators.
The company also said it’s rolling out changes to Reels to make the short-form video format more appealing to TikTok creators. For instance, U.S.-based Instagram creators can now publish Reels up to three minutes long, a notable increase from the previous 90-second limit. On TikTok, however, creators can record videos up to 10 minutes long, and in some cases, upload content up to an hour in length.
In addition, Meta is going to make Reels more prominent, as the company plans to recommend Reels in more places across Instagram in Facebook. For instance, people may start to see recommended Reels higher up in their home feed. Plus, they may see more reels in their search results.
To further court TikTok creators, Meta notes that it has optimized its ranking systems to allow newer creators to break through to new audiences.
Meta will also allow creators to show their Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube handles and follower counts in their Facebook profiles to boost their credibility on its platform.
Meta already made other changes to take advantage of TikTok’s current uncertainty in the U.S.
On Sunday, Meta revealed that it’s going to launch a Capcut-like app called Edits next month. On Friday, it introduced updates to make it easier for Instagram users to find Reels that their friends and followers are liking on the platform. The app will also encourage users to start conversations about Reels through a new “reply bar.”
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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at restoring TikTok service in the U.S.
The order instructs relevant government agencies to “pursue a resolution” that “protects national security” while “saving [TikTok.]” Via the order, Trump is instructing the U.S. Attorney General not to take any action for 75 days to enforce the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), the act that effectively banned TikTok in the U.S. on Sunday, January 19.
“During this period, the Department of Justice shall take no action to enforce the Act or impose any penalties against any entity for any noncompliance with the Act,” the executive order reads. “Even after the expiration of the above-specified period, the Department of Justice shall not take any action to enforce the Act […]”
Trump’s move comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the PAFACA, which passed with bipartisan Congressional support during former President Joe Biden’s term.
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TikTok may be back, but that hasn’t prevented other Chinese competitors from gaining users. In the lead up to a ban on TikTok — which kicked off Sunday and lasted a day — a number of other video apps rose through the ranks and now dominate the App Store’s Top Charts.
The Chinese app RedNote (which is listed on the app stores as Xiaohongshu) became the No. 1 app in the U.S. last week, followed by video apps like Clapper, Flip, and others. On Monday, following TikTok’s restoration of service, RedNote retained its No. 1 spot on the App Store, after having attracted some 700,000 new U.S. users.
TikTok users’ move to RedNote was meant to send a signal to U.S. lawmakers and Meta alike that they would rather join another Chinese app similar to TikTok than return to Instagram Reels.
Though TikTok is back online, the app stores aren’t yet hosting it for download; app marketplaces still have to abide by U.S. law, despite President-elect Trump’s assurances that he will extend the deadline for the TikTok ban.
Instead, both app stores’ top charts continue to reflect the shift to other TikTok alternatives.
In Apple’s U.S. App Store, for instance, video apps including RedNote, Likee, Clapper, and Flip hold the No. 1, 2, 4, and 10 spots in the Overall Top Charts as of Monday morning. Favorited, an app dedicated to livestreams, is No. 15.
Social network Bluesky also just added an optional custom video feed, however, its app has dropped out of the top 10 position it held last week on the U.S. App Store. It’s No. 13 as of Monday morning on the App Store and No. 15 on Google Play.
Still, Bluesky gained a few more downloads thanks to the TikTok ban and now has 28.29 million users, up from 27.5 million last week.
According to estimates from app store intelligence provider Appfigures, RedNote, Flip, and Clapper, all saw a massive growth spurt last week from single-digit thousand downloads per day earlier in January to tens of thousands of U.S. downloads on Friday.
RedNote, meanwhile, was receiving hundreds of thousands of downloads.
RedNote gained 818,000 new U.S. installs across the App Store and Google Play during January 2025. Because the app is localized in Mandarin, language learning app Duolingo also reported a 216% spike in U.S. users trying to learn the language last week.
Currently, it’s the No. 1 app in the U.S. on the U.S. App Store and Google Play, excluding games.
Clapper, a TikTok alternative aimed at teens and adults ages 17 and up, gained 646,000 downloads on the App Store and Google Play in the U.S. On Friday, it added 87,000 new downloads, or 1,030% more than the 7,000 new downloads it saw back on January 1, Appfigures reports. It’s now the No. 4 top app (excluding games) on the U.S. App Store and No. 2 on Google Play.
Likee, a short video app, is No. 2 on the U.S. App Store and No. 3 on Google Play. It saw a massive surge of growth, moving from No. 202 on the U.S. App Store on Saturday to No. 2 by 3 a.m. on Sunday, Appfigures says. In total, it saw 283,000 downloads during January so far. On Google Play, it jumped to the No. 8 position across both apps and games, on Sunday night and has since dropped to No. 11. It’s currently the No. 3 app (excluding games).
For Android users, the short video app, Scoopz, made it into the No. 4 position on Google Play while the short drama app ReelShort is No. 7 on Google Play’s list of top apps, excluding games.
Lastly, Flip, which focuses on social commerce, grew by 580,000 downloads in January, the data indicates. (However, Flip also ran many TikTok ads over the past week, leading to those gains.) It’s No. 10 on the U.S. App Store and No. 9 on Google Play’s top charts, excluding games.
Despite many TikTok users’ signaling that they wouldn’t use Instagram, Meta’s app continued to hold a high rank on both app stores, including No. 8 on the U.S. Apple App Store Top Apps chart and No. 5 on Google Play’s Top Apps chart as of Monday morning.
After the TikTok ban went into effect, U.S. users immediately tried installing VPN apps to work around the restrictions to no avail. (TikTok’s mobile app remained blocked even when VPNs were used).
Still, this temporarily drove a number of new U.S. users to VPN apps like VPN – Super Unlimited Proxy, which grew from the No. 91 app to the No. 3 app within 36 hours. Another app, VPN – Fast VPN Super, climbed 155 spots during that same time, and Nord VPN hit No. 9 after climbing 160 spots in the top charts.
Other apps that rose hundreds of spots overnight after the ban included X-VPN, Proton VPN, Free VPN .org, and Express VPN.
The app store charts are likely to soon shift again as U.S. users realize they can return to TikTok and decide to move away from at least some of their recent backup choices for a replacement.
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Social network X is trying to capitalize on the removal of ByteDance apps like TikTok and Lemon8 from U.S. app stores by launching a dedicated vertical video feed.
The company is adding a video tab in the app’s bottom bar for users in the U.S. to let them quickly access video content on the platform.
“An immersive new home for videos is rolling out to users in the US today,” the company said in a post on Sunday.
X users already can scroll through short videos by tapping on a video on the timeline and scrolling up. This new tab for videos is just a dedicated section for these videos. Plus, this is not the first time the company has tried to create a new home for videos.
An app reverse engineer had previously previewed a media tab for videos, but this is the first time X is making an official announcement.
The social network has lately been focusing on video experiences. Last year, it launched a standalone TV app to show videos from different organizations and creators.
With TikTok facing troubles in the U.S., social networks are trying to take advantage of the uncertainty around ByteDance apps in the U.S. Meta announced video editing app called Edits to compete with ByteDance’s CapCut, while X rival Bluesky has launched a custom feed for vertical videos.
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It is the product shipping time for all social networks with TikTok’s services in the restoration phase, and the app still unavailable in the App Store and the Play Store. Bluesky said Sunday that it is launching a custom feed for vertical video in its app.
Users can see a trending videos section in the explore tab on Bluesky’s mobile app. And just like any other vertical video app, you can swipe up to see more videos. You can choose to pin the feed to have it show up on your home screen or add it to your list of feeds.
“We had to get in on the video action, too — Bluesky now has custom feeds for video! Like any other feed, you can choose to pin these or not. Bluesky is yours to customize,” the company said in a post.
The company added that people who are not seeing the video feed appear for them should restart their app. Plus, it also acknowledged developers building TikTok alternatives on AT Protocol — the decentralized protocol behind Bluesky — including Tik.Blue, Skylight.Social, And Bluescreen.Blue. These apps are in the early stages of development, with most of them in a closed testing program.
While there is chaos going on related to TikTok and other ByteDance apps, including CapCut, Lemon8, and Marvel Snap, Bluesky saw user growth and crossed the mark of 28 million users over the weekend.
Other social networks are taking advantage of this situation as well. Elon Musk-owned X also launched a dedicated feed for vertical videos in the U.S. Meanwhile, Meta announced a new video editing app called Edits to rival CapCut.
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