After TikTok went offline for about 14 hours on Saturday, businesses who rely on it may wonder what’s next for the platform and how it might impact them. The platform, with its 170 million users, has helped many amass a following to help them build brand identity, grow their business and more.
“TikTok is probably at this point the most popular platform for a lot of our clients,” said Shannon Duer, EGC Group social media manager in Melville. “A lot of businesses are trying to reach young consumers and a younger audience and what better way to do that than through TikTok, which is really where all the young people are.”
Businesses on TikTok can see the platform as all-inclusive. They can partner with influencers and through TikTop Shop, sell items to consumers directly, where people can access a cart, shop later and get discounts, Duer said.
But now the platform’s future is uncertain.
TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance was supposed to find a U.S. buyer or be banned on Jan. 19. Yet on Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep the platform operating for 75 days, a relief to its users even as national security questions persist. During his first term as president, Trump led the effort to ban TikTok, which he had said posed a threat to U.S. national security. Former President Joe Biden declined to enforce the bipartisan measure that he signed into law, while Trump has pledged to keep TikTok open after crediting it for helping his 2025 election victory. Trump’s legal authority to preserve TikTok is unclear under the terms of the law recently upheld unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile the discussion about the platform continues.
“When a foreign adversary owns your infrastructure, it can use it when they see fit and they can use it to harm the United States,” U.S. Sen. Kristin Gillibrand said in a television interview recently. “To give that amount of power to someone who is not typically our friend and could become an adversary in the future is deeply unwise.”
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins also weighed in. “TikTok is enjoyed by millions of Americans. The problem is not the platform but rather its control by the Chinese Communist Party,” she said in a statement. “The huge bipartisan majority that passed this law is not looking to ban TikTok; it is looking to prevent the Chinese government from using the popular social media site as a propaganda platform and as an espionage tool to collect extensive personal information on Americans.”
Josh Lafazan, the former Nassau County legislator, has more than 701.9 followers on TikTok. He is watching the news surrounding the platform closely.
“TikTok has been an exceptional tool to help me share my political opinions with a wide audience of followers,” Lafazan said. “However, I’ve said consistently that data collection by the Chinese Communist Party puts all of us at risk, and that threat must categorically be removed.”
Lafazan said he is “hopeful that President Trump will be successful in helping lead an acquisition of TikTok by an American buyer, and I’ll continue to use the platform until we get clarity on this within the 75 days of his executive order.”
Duer said that the EGC Group has been monitoring issues surrounding TikTok since a potential ban was announced over a year ago, and advising clients.
“It’s been a very dramatic time,” she said.
“We’re seeing a lot of people shift to Instagram – influencers and all,” she said.
Influencers have been saying that they don’t know what to expect, urging people to follow them also on Instagram, whose features are similar to TikTok, to continue their same reach, Duer said.
EGC, she said, developed strategies for clients, “making sure anyone we partner with, and the posts we are doing, are able to make sense on Instagram as well.”
Other platforms, including Lemonade Social and RedNote, are also trying to fill a potential void for content creators and their audience, she said.
On Monday, companies including Oracle and Akamai Technologies were powering TikTok’s servers to stay online, while others including Apple and Google made the app unavailable for new users to download.
But for anyone who already has the app, everything on TikTok resumed as it was, with the same content and followers, Duer said. People are posting, while awaiting further clarity.
“We’re continuing to post on TikTok as long as it’s available to us,” she said. “We work with influencers, and they’re continuing to post too.”
Duer recommends ensuring “you’re being strategic and proactive.” This includes diversifying an organization’s “social media presence by being on several platforms with tailored content strategies.
“Don’t just throw all your eggs in one basket,” she said. “Make sure you’re repurposing content to Instagram so if [the ban] ever does happen, you have a plan in place to provide people with this content somewhere else and be able to direct them there.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.