Another TikTok Skylight climbs to 380K+ users after closing TikTok US deal

SkylightTikTok’s alternative, built on open technology, is benefiting from the concerns that have arisen The change of ownership of TikTok US last week. The startup, which makes a short app, similar to TikTok, says it now has more than 380,000 users and continues to grow on busy weekends.

It was established last year by courtesy of Mark Cuban and other investors, Skylight’s mobile app is built on the AT Protocol, a technology that also powers X-series Bluesky, which currently he is north of 42 million users.

Skylight, founded by CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer, offers a built-in video editor; user profile; support for liking, commenting, and sharing; it’s an opportunity for community caregivers to create favorite foods for others to follow.

The app now has over 150,000 videos uploaded directly to the platform. It can also download videos from Bluesky thanks to its AT Protocol integration.

Harmeyer said Saturday that 1.4 million videos were played on the app the day before, a 3x increase over the previous 24 hours. The program also saw enrollment increase by more than 150%. Some notable statistics include a 50% increase in returning users, an over 40% increase in video views, and a 100% increase in posts created.

This may have been due to concerns about TikTok’s change in ownership and its unfortunate timing. technical difficulties.

TikTok was he announced on January 22 the establishment of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, designed to meet the demands of Trump. Executive Order want the company’s US operations to be sold to a group of American investors. TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance will now own less than 20% of the new entity.

Agreement It was caused by increasing tensions between the US and China, which raised concerns that TikTok could be a threat to national security, by collecting information about US citizens and through algorithmic influence. Now, however, some of TikTok’s users are more concerned about American investors and their loyalty to Trump.

These concerns grew when TikTok launched revised privacy policywhich includes permission to track users’ GPS, among other things. Users also said the language in the privacy policy that said The app can track the movement of people. Although the language was not new, and its inclusion is related to compliance with the government’s privacy laws, some users began to encourage people to remove the program.

Although it is not clear how many TikTok users were targeted, what is clear is that some people looked for alternatives. Over the weekend, Skylight CEO Tori White said the program had added about 20,000 people and continues to grow. So far in January, the app has seen about 95,000 monthly users.

White cited the program’s open and customizable nature as a driving force behind its growth.

Although Skylight has made significant gains, it is still overshadowed by TikTok and its 200 million US monthly active users. However, the founders of Skylight believe that their approach offers greater opportunities for growth.

“We’ve seen what happens when one person orders something that gets pushed into people’s food,” White told TechCrunch. “It’s not only destroying the relationship between the creator and their followers, but also the overall health of the platform. That’s why we built Skylight Social on open standards. We wanted the power of creators and users to be guaranteed by technology. Not an empty promise, but an unchangeable right.”