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TikTok may have been theworld ’s top app by downloadsand consumer spending in 2023 , but it was not the top by existent employment . Last year , Facebook again maintain its No . 1 position by monthly active exploiter , play along by other Meta - have apps WhatsApp , Instagram , and Messenger — all of which were ahead of TikTok at No . 5 . Now new information indicates that TikTok ’s ontogenesis has started to slow , begging the question of whether the app ’s move into e - commerce via TikTok Shop is to blame .
fit in to new data point from market intelligence firmSensor Tower , while TikTok ’s growth remains positive , that outgrowth is decelerating . In 2022 , TikTok ’s monthly active user grew an average of 12 % class - over - twelvemonth per poop , but this figure fell to 3 % year - over - year per quarter in 2023 .
The change come on the cad ofTikTok ’s launchof TikTok Shop in the U.S.
The video appbegan examination Shop in the U.S. in November 2022and those tests expanded at the get-go of last year as more brands come on circuit board , including PacSun , Revolve , Willow Boutique , and mantrap brand KimChi Chic , among others . While the Shop didn’t“officially ” launch in the U.S. until September 2023 , it was only one of several efforts to render the influence of TikTok videos — fundamentally the whole “ TikTok made me buy it”meme — into real - world sale .
Last summertime in the U.K. , for example , TikTok experimented with an in - app shopping plane section called “ Trendy Beat,”which offered products sold by TikTok parent ByteDance . TikTok also offers an affiliate program that allow for creators to bring in commissions from product , asthe APandothershave reported .
But marketer ’ embrace of the shopping political program has started to lead to ill , as Business Insider note in November , with some keen that TikTok Shop was change state the app into an “ ad - filled wasteland ” and a “ dystopian ” blank . Elsewhere on the WWW , Redditors have been debating whetherTikTok Shop has “ ruin ” the app , which is now filled with “ people dropshipping / selling cheap product , ” as one Reddit user put it .
“ Personally , I ’m start to get really nettle by how almost every other telecasting on my [ For You Page ] is someone overhyping a mathematical product from the Shop feature film to endeavor to get it to go viral and make a lot of commissions,”wrote Redditor u / megg - salad - sammich in September . “ It ’s capital that it ’s a unexampled boulevard for Divine to make money , but I find myself scrolling less and less because I make love pretty much every TV is just hear to get me to buy some random affair , ” they said .
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While TikTok users are adapt to their favorite societal connection plow into an on-line mall , TikTok ’s Shop Seller app , which powers its e - commercialism initiative , has farm .
Sensor Tower datum indicates the Shop Seller ’s growth has been “ robust ” since the fourth quarter of 2022 , climb 230 % year - over - yr as of the fourth quarter of 2023 . However , the app has only a fraction of TikTok ’s fighting user base — currently 1.4 billion as of the first quarter of this class . Shop Seller , meanwhile , has just around 6 million monthly dynamic users , the firm reported .
Instagram could ultimately gain from the user thwarting around TikTok Shop , given that the Meta - own appremoved its own Shop tab in January of last yearandkilled off lively shopping in March . This could potentially make it more satisfactory to those want to ward off more direct calls to activity to denounce in - app .
Meta ’s move was triggered by broader manufacture drift , which seem to not augur well for TikTok Shop ’s hereafter . Live shopping had blossomed during the pandemic , and einsteinium - mercantilism salesskyrocketed . But when things returned to normal , social DoC ( including live shopping ) was found to havemade up only around 5 % of full tocopherol - commerce salesin the U.S. as of 2022 . That seemed to indicate that U.S. consumers may not have been as prim to shop flat from video recording , though theyare obviously still influenced by on-line style .
However , users are n’t yet so upset with TikTok Shop as to give up the app for Instagram Reels .
Sensor Tower find that Instagram ’s monthly dynamic user ontogenesis has been relatively consistent at “ mid - individual digits ” and has n’t been significantly impacted negatively or positively since the launching of the TikTok Shop Seller app .
Data from another firm , Appfigures , also fend for this conclusion but tot that , although TikTok ’s revenue has been growing , its downloads have been stagnant or dropping more than growing — a trend that ’s been go on for over a class now , including both globally and in the U.S.
