To be a mega-influencer on social media, you need 1mn followers. That is no easy feat. But for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, it took less than a day to go from zero to 3mn followers on TikTok. For ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the short video social media platform that he tried to ban in 2020 as president, it is the best thing that could have happened to it.
The race between Trump and Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in this year’s US presidential election is expected to be a close one. But on TikTok Trump is winning by a good margin. Trump’s TikTok account has surpassed 5.5mn followers with Biden’s campaign at roughly 365,000. Campaign officials for Biden, who has signed a bill that would ban the app, have said TikTok could help him reach younger voters.
Their presence on TikTok highlights how important the platform has become in the daily lives of people in the US. Around half the US digital population and most people under the age of 30 use TikTok, with approximately 170mn users in the country.