The Marketplace Boom   //   January 27, 2025

‘We are massively overloaded’: Platforms like Flip are seeing a surge of TikTok refugees

Video shopping platform Flip was bracing for a flood of TikTok refugees in the lead-up to Jan. 19 — when TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance was required to sell its stake in the app or face a U.S. ban. But nothing could have prepared the social commerce startup for the surge it experienced when TikTok went dark. 

The wave of new users joining Flip has been so intense that the app crashed both before the divestment deadline and on the day of the ban itself, as panicked TikTokers scrambled to find an alternative internet home. The company had to temporarily limit the number of users who could access Flip, the app’s founder and CEO, Noor Agha, wrote in an advisory notice to users at the time. 

Since the beginning of January, approximately 250,000 new users have signed up for Flip every day. On Sunday, the day the divest-or-ban law went into effect, Flip saw a staggering twenty-fold increase in new user installs month over month, pushing it to the top of Apple’s app store rankings. Additionally, users have been spending more time on the app since December, up to 35 minutes per day on average from 10 minutes a day.

This, combined with the surge of new users, caused Flip’s systems to strain.

“We thought we had already planned really well, but we couldn’t even come close to handling the traffic we were getting,” Eddie Vivas, Flip’s president, told Modern Retail in an interview. Flip’s internal teams have been working around the clock to meet the swell of demand, running on three hours of sleep a night, Vivas said. 

The data shows platforms like Flip are reaping the benefits as uncertainty swirls around TikTok’s future in the U.S. TikTok is back online after President Donald Trump issued an executive order that delayed the divest-or-ban deadline by 75 days, but Vivas said Flip is still seeing strong growth numbers. 

Still, the true test lies ahead: whether these platforms — from giants like Instagram to emerging players like Flip — can genuinely fill TikTok’s void and keep American users engaged long-term. While platforms saw explosive growth during TikTok’s short-lived hiatus, it’s far from certain that their moment in the spotlight will translate into lasting success rather than just a fleeting trend for both brands and consumers. And even though Trump’s move was a temporary reprieve, TikTok may continue to remain available in the U.S.

TikTok refugees by the numbers

It’s not only users flocking to these new platforms — brands are also increasingly turning to Flip as a TikTok alternative.

In the past, Flip averaged about 150 brands onboarding each month, but that number has skyrocketed recently. Flip received more than 700 brand applications in December alone, Vivas said. He added that Flip rejects the majority of the brands that apply, particularly “direct from factory” or low-quality “gizmos and gadgets.”

The idea behind Flip is to turn everyday shoppers into creators. Despite the influx of TikTok refugees, Flip hopes to differentiate itself from the ByteDance-owned platform through video reviews of brand-name products made by real shoppers, as opposed to paid influencers. Users earn cash based on engagement and conversions regardless of the number of followers they have.

Participating brands integrate their existing e-commerce platforms with Flip to sync their product catalogs. Like TikTok Shop, consumers can buy brands’ products within the Flip app. Flip has at least 5,000 brands on the platform, including Edikted, Olaplex and Samsung.

Historically, small and emerging brands have predominantly sold goods on Flip, but that is starting to change, too. “What we’re seeing is a lot more legacy brands starting to reach out,” Vivas said. The downside is that bigger brands will take longer to onboard. 

“We can get a Shopify brand or a BigCommerce brand live in 15 minutes,” Vivas said. “But if we’re integrating an old-school warehouse management system, that’s going to take more time.” 

Flip’s user base has historically been young professional women in coastal cities, focusing on categories like women’s fashion, beauty and wellness. However, the recent influx introduced a more diverse demographic. “We’ve seen everything now — more men, different age groups, and people from a variety of backgrounds joining the platform,” Vivas said. 

Flip isn’t the only platform awash with TikTok refugees. The weekend TikTok shut down, live shopping platform Whatnot had its three largest seller application days ever, a company spokesperson told Modern Retail. 

Likewise, newsletter platform Substack saw its three busiest days ever for daily active users in the app ahead of the TikTok ban. Now, there are more than 4 million paid subscriptions to Substack publications and tens of millions of total active subscribers across the network, according to the company.

Social shopping app LTK saw a whopping 78% increase in app downloads on the day of the TikTok ban. Meanwhile, link-in-bio company Linktree reported that there was a 1,170-fold surge in users adding links to the Chinese short-form video app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. Linktree also reported spikes of as much as 570 times to apps including Flip, Clapper, Fav and Fanbase. 

Platforms are determined to retain the influx of TikTok refugees they’ve obtained — and attract even more. One way they’re looking to do that is by doling out hefty cash funds to creators. Meta rolled out a new bonus program that will give TikTok creators the ability to earn up to $5,000 in bonuses over three months for posting Reels to Facebook and Instagram. On Thursday, Substack launched a fund that provides $20 million in guarantees designed to help creators move their audiences to Substack. 

And last week, Flip quietly debuted a fund that provides up to $100 million worth of equity to accepted creators over the course of five years. Grants vary from $6,000 to $100,000, based on the creator’s engagement level. To date, Flip has raised $240 million in funding. Vivas said Flip received 7,000 applications from creators in the first 24 hours the fund was announced. 

Time will tell if any of these platforms will be able to reach the size and scope of TikTok. One recent estimate puts the value of TikTok’s U.S. business at around $50 billion. By comparison, Flip has a valuation of $1.05 billion, per the company. Similarly, Whatnot, which recently raised $265 million in funding, has a valuation of $5 billion. Importantly, the apps that people gravitate toward in place of TikTok might not necessarily become their go-to shopping platforms. 

What brands are saying 

Brands are divided on what platform, if any, will become the next TikTok. 

One of the most popular platforms that emerged during TikTok’s wild week is RedNote. As of Jan. 24, it ranks third in Apple’s app store, after Bluesky and Threads. Brands are among the “TikTok refugees” flocking to RedNote, Modern Retail previously reported. Those brands said they have doubts about RedNote’s longevity in the U.S., but one brand founder is bullish about the app’s future. 

Lulu Ge, the founder and CEO of Elix, a hormonal health brand that incorporates Chinese herbal practices, was blown away when she downloaded RedNote for the first time last week and discovered that there were already heaps of existing content about her brand on the app. 

“When we joined RedNote, we saw that we already had one million organic impressions on content created about Elix,” she said. “I would encourage all brand owners or marketers to look up your brand and see what, if anything, has been said about it because that’s really rich data.”

Ge, who speaks Mandarin, plans to create content specifically geared toward the RedNote platform. Even though RedNote may be subject to the same divest-or-ban law imperiling TikTok, Ge said she’s all in on RedNote in the meantime.  

As she put it, “I think a lot in the social media sphere could change in four to five years, and I think we could get a lot of value out of our investment in a new platform within that time period.”