Donald Trump, the former president, has just posted his first-ever video on TikTok last Saturday and within no time he has already garnered more followers and likes than President Joe Biden’s campaign account as the two men are competing for attention days before this year’s general elections.
Within four days of starting, Trump’s first post next to Dana White the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship before going to last week’s fights in Newark has bee liked by 5.9 million people and he now has 5.6 million followers. Biden’s campaign launched in February with hundreds of videos so far has got only a meagre 361K followers and 4.7 million likes (The Times).
Trump’s campaign released a statement yesterday in which they compare him to himself four years ago when he was trying to ban an app that is now popular among millions.
Presently, Trump supports TikTok even though it faces possible US banning due to its Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd failing to divest from the platform by January 19; however Biden is still using TikTok for campaigning purposes after signing into law one that would eventually see TikTok banned on grounds of it threatening America security wise.
Ben Darr, founder of CredoIQ, a social media analytics company said that generally over the past few months content on TikTok about Trump performed better compared with posts concentrating on Biden although it can vary depending on how events are unfolding (Delacourt).
According to The Guardian: “…the Biden campaign says it will increase its presence on social media platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram while spending millions of dollars on digital investments including influencer relationships.”
Both presidential candidates are targeting youthful electorates through tiktok. According to its parent company ByteDance USA Inc., “Tik-Tok” has more than 170m monthly users in America who’re fighting against a new law passed by Congress calling for divestiture or prohibition (BBC).
