• Instagram has a new app to rival TikTok's editing app CapCut.
• The "Edits" app launches on March 31, and some creators already have access.
• A new tag will appear for videos that are edited in the app.

Instagram's battle with TikTok has entered the video editing realm.

In January, the Meta-owned platform announced it would launch "Edits," a separate app for editing videos, this year. It's a clear move to compete with TikTok parent ByteDance's own editing app, CapCut, which could also stop operating in the US due to a divest-or-ban law.

This week, Instagram began adding a label to some videos with a "Made with Edits" tag on posts. When you click on the tag, it prompts you to pre-download the Edits app, which is slated to launch on March 31. On TikTok, videos edited in CapCut using templates have a similar tag directing users to CapCut.

If a video is edited in the Edits app and someone posts the video to Instagram from Edits, the tag will appear.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, Instagram's top executive, posted reels with this tag this week. The "Made with Edits" label will soon appear on more videos as Instagram onboards creators who have been given early access to test the app. One talent manager told BI that one of their creator clients already had access.

Reels made in Edits will also be optimized for higher-resolution video — up to 2K resolution. (Last month, some users spotted this language in the Instagram app when posting reels: "Reels made with Edits are optimized for high-quality playback on Instagram.")

You may be asking: Will this affect how reels perform or are ranked on Instagram?

As of now, Instagram is not giving preferential ranking to reels with the "Made with Edits" tag, the company confirmed to BI.

• A new virtual try-on startup powered by AI is stirring up buzz in the tech world.
• Doji raised capital late last year in a round led by Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six fund.
• Its fundraising comes as some in tech are betting AI can reinvigorate the consumer startup space.

The tech industry is drooling over a new AI startup. This time, it's in the fashion space.

Doji, a new app that allows users to create AI avatars with their own likeness and virtually try on clothing, launched from stealth in January and has been rolling out access to its private beta.

Techies are loving it.

Early beta testers, including some who work for other hot AI companies like Anthropic, Cursor, and Humane, have been taking to X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn to share screenshots of the AI-generated model versions of themselves wearing designer clothes.

One of Doji's biggest fans: Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian.

"Consumer is fun again thanks to AI," Ohanian said in January about Doji in a post to X, where he's been posting AI-generated fit pics from the beta.

Ohanian is also putting money behind it.

His venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six, invested in Doji, Business Insider has learned. Doji confirmed to BI that it raised an early-stage investment in 2024 from Seven Seven Six and Origins Fund. Doji did not disclose the size of the fundraise.

"Over the years, a lot of folks have tried to nail virtual try-on — the ultimate holy grail for recreating the dressing room experience online," Chris Vanzetta, a partner at Seven Seven Six who led the deal, told BI in a statement. "Powered by their cutting-edge AI technology and incredible taste, Doji has finally brought that experience to consumers with its lifelike virtual avatars."

Building AI for everyday consumers

Doji was cofounded by Dorian Dargan (previously at Meta and Apple) and Jim Winkens (previously at Google DeepMind) in 2024 after the two first met on Twitter in 2022.

The pair are self-professed fashion lovers who, in building Doji, are bringing together their AI and consumer expertise.

"We started it with ourselves as users in mind," Dargan said. "And I think that's one of the reasons why it's being well received, because it's actually designed for people versus just to be technology."

Here's how it works: Users upload several selfies from different angles and two full-body images, then wait about 20 minutes for the app's AI to generate a virtual model.

In the app, users can try on products that the Doji team has curated, as well as import products with shoppable links, Dargan said. Then, if someone wants to buy a product they were virtually trying on, there is a button that brings the user to wherever that product is hosted online.

Consumer has been a sleepy segment of the startup market for years, but AI is pumping energy into the industry and getting some investors excited about opportunities.

"I think the smarter investors are seeing now that most of the value in AI is getting accrued at the application layer," Winkens said. "We are seeing, also outside of us, money flowing into the application layer more and more."

Doji isn't the only virtual try-on startup to raise venture capital recently. Vybe, a browser extension for Safari that lets people virtually try on clothing while online shopping, announced a $4.75 million seed funding round led by Stellation Capital last summer.

Tech workers are driving hype for the app

Jane Manchun Wong, an engineer and tech blogger with access to Doji's beta, told BI that she first learned about the app after seeing people she knew post about it on X.

One feature that made an impression on Wong was the option for Doji to generate potential outfits.

"I don't really like to try out different choices of clothes, so having it be able to pick the clothes for me is really inspiring," Wong told BI.

Karine Hsu, founder and CEO of startup creative agency Slope, who also uses Doji's beta, said she was impressed by the tool's accuracy. There have been a few instances where an item was transposed, or the fit was off, but it has been minor, she said.

Right now, Doji's app includes a curated selection of designer items from brands like Maison Margiela, Diesel, and Rick Owens. Even though Hsu doesn't purchase luxury goods, she said it's been fun to try on things she wouldn't buy herself and explore her personal style with shoes and accessories. She's also used the feature where Doji users can input their own products from across the internet to try on.

"I did find myself inputting athleisure from Alo Yoga and more everyday items so I could see myself in them before purchasing," she said. "I actually ended up going to the store to try on the product again, but it was cool that I had a reference photo that I could compare to."

• Instagram has been beefing up DMs with over 20 updates in recent months, with many focused on AI.
• Top exec Adam Mosseri said Instagram is "doubling down" on DMs in 2025.
• We made a chart breaking down all the recent changes at the Meta-owned platform.

Instagram has been very busy building new tools for its direct messaging products.

In the past year, the Meta-owned platform has rolled out more than 20 updates to DMs, ranging from AI chatbots to new ways to share music with friends.

Why is Instagram so busy in the DMs? It's become the primary social interaction on the app.

"When you think of Instagram, you probably think of a feed of square photos, but how Instagram works has changed a lot over the years," Adam Mosseri, Instagram's top executive, said last year. "And if you look at what people share, how people express their creativity, the primary way they do so is actually DMs on Instagram."

In March 2024, Instagram announced a handful of new messaging features, including the ability to edit messages after they'd been sent and turn on or off read receipts.

The following months were filled with various updates to Instagram DMs. Several months saw new AI feature rollouts, like a suite of user-made AI characters in July and AI-generated DM themes in September.

Instagram also confirmed via a Threads post from Mosseri that it was testing moving its DM button, typically seen at the top right of the app, to the main navigation bar in November.

To top it all off, at the start of 2025, Mosseri said it would be "doubling down" on messaging as it focused on two core priorities for the new year — creativity and connection.

Business Insider compiled all of the updates Instagram has made to messaging since last March to help you keep track.

Here's a chart breaking down each feature and when it launched:

• Left Field, a new dating app, has launched in New York City.
• The app uses location-based notifications to facilitate real-life encounters.
• Left Field aims to use IRL events like parties to grow users, and expand to college campuses in May.

Another new dating app is hoping to appeal to users with swipe fatigue.

Left Field launched in New York City this week and is the latest startup trying to make inroads as industry heavyweights falter.

When Left Field's founders, Samantha Martin and Kate Sieler, moved to New York after graduating from college, they were met with the same qualms that many daters have right now.

Martin told Business Insider that endless swiping, lack of organic interactions, and a barrage of paywalls are just some of the "dating pains" the two felt.

The two began building Left Field in 2024 and have since quit their jobs in finance and consulting after raising a family and friends funding round. Sean Miller, a founding engineer at fintech startup Apollo Card, joined Left Field as its technical cofounder in 2025. The app officially launched on the Apple App Store in February.

Here's how Left Field works: The profile itself is similar to many dating apps (it has photos, biographical details, and some prompts). However, instead of swiping through a stack of nearby singles, the app will send push notifications of a potential match in the area if location services are enabled and a user crosses paths with someone on the app.

"We like to call ourselves the Pokémon Go of dating," Martin said.

The idea is that Left Field is a more passive way to date, where you can toggle location services on and off.

"If you're interested in meeting someone, you just turn on the app, and then you can close it and forget about it," Sieler said.

It's not the first dating app to try to capture the feeling of crossing paths with someone nearby.

Happn, a French dating app, launched a decade ago with a similar premise.

"Singles today are looking to bring back real-life encounters, like going to bars and restaurants," Happn CEO Karima Ben Abdelmalek told BI last year.

As of now, Left Field does not incorporate any paid features.

Growing a dating app with IRL events

Like many new dating apps that have launched recently, Left Field is turning to social media to build an audience. It's working with three comedy creators to make content across Instagram and TikTok.

It's also taking a page from Tinder and Hinge's playbook by throwing parties and focusing on college campuses.

Left Field plans to expand to several college campuses in May and introduce ambassador programs for college students.

In the meantime, to grow the app in New York, Left Field plans to partner with local groups and venues, such as running clubs, bars, and comedy clubs, and host singles dating events.

Left Field hosted its launch party on Thursday night at a crowded bar in Brooklyn, where I spoke with a handful of attendees about the state of dating. The general feeling at the event around dating — particularly in New York — was exhaustion with the apps.

Dating app giants like Bumble and Match Group have seen stock prices decline since reaching all-time highs in 2021.

"It's the prime time to have a dating app startup because people are clearly so frustrated with the current offerings," Martin said. "The Catch-22 is that simultaneously, people don't like dating apps, but it's also harder to meet in real life because people are dependent on them."

• LTK is relaunching its app on Thursday to add new social features and expand beyond shopping.
• Other social-commerce apps like Flip have similarly moved into general entertainment.
• The companies are stepping up efforts to blend entertainment and shopping as they chase users.

For social-shopping apps, commerce alone isn't cutting it.

LTK, a platform that lets users buy products from creator videos and posts, is relaunching its app on Thursday to encourage more everyday content from its users.

"We're moving from being a shopping app to really being a lifestyle app," Amber Venz Box, cofounder of LTK, told Business Insider.

LTK's new feed lets users discover videos by geography and topic, such as fashion, parenting, cooking, and travel. It still wants creators to tag items in videos (that's how the company and its affiliate partners make money), but it hopes they'll vlog about other parts of their lives without any intent to push products.

The app also plans to roll out more strictly social features, like the ability to connect with friends.

It's not the only commerce platform looking to broaden its appeal in recent months. Flip, a TikTok-like app once composed purely of videos tagged with products, opened up to other content in July. It now hosts everyday videos it calls clips, which run the gamut from movie scenes to creator-on-the-street interviews and other types of content that would live on a general entertainment platform.

"The idea of social commerce over the last five years was that everyone built it to be a commerce platform where there's somebody selling you the product," Flip's CEO Noor Agha told BI.

Agha said Flip's clips feature is part of a push to merge entertainment and commerce. "If we cannot solve both, social commerce will never actually go mainstream," Agha said.

The opportunity is huge for companies in the category that can build an audience, as platforms like TikTok have shown. In a December EMARKETER forecast, the research firm predicted the number of US social-commerce buyers would hit 100 million in 2024, with sales crossing $100 billion in 2026. Social-shopping startups like Whatnot and ShopMy have pulled in tens of millions of dollars in new funding in the past few months as they chase new users.

TikTok made entertainment a must-have in social shopping

The push among shopping apps to add general entertainment is likely a response to the rise of TikTok's e-commerce platform, Shop. The app built an audience of more than a billion users globally through social entertainment before introducing commerce features.

"A lot of the social-shopping apps are trying to reverse engineer that entertainment component into their apps to make them more sticky and to keep users and audiences coming back," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at EMARKETER covering retail and e-commerce.

Social platforms in the US have spent years testing features to get users to buy stuff in-app, with mixed results. TikTok finally showed that consumers, if prodded enough, would get on board.

Canaves said TikTok has shown that social commerce can work, "but it needs to be grounded in content, and typically that's entertainment content and creator content."

Ultimately, that reverse engineering feat may be tough to pull off. In February, Amazon nixed its TikTok-like shopping feed, Inspire, in another sign that shopping-only video feeds lack staying power.

But relying on platforms like TikTok or Instagram for distribution is also risky for startups that don't want to be subject to the whims of Big Tech. Instagram, for example, has pulled back on commerce features in recent years.

LTK recently partnered with TikTok to integrate affiliate links within the TikTok app. But TikTok generally keeps its e-commerce features in-house. The company's future in the US is also uncertain due to a divest-or-ban law that targets the company and its owner ByteDance.

For social-shopping startups, building an entertainment platform where they can control everything may be the best path forward.

Putting social in social commerce

Making shopping feel more social is key to retaining users and growing an app's audience. Venz Box said a big part of that is tapping into the relationships users have with brands and the creators themselves.

LTK is encouraging creators to post more lifestyle content to the app so that users feel as connected to the creator on LTK as they do on larger platforms like TikTok or Instagram.

"We started investing in order to be the place that they retain, nurture, and grow their community," Venz Box said.

Community is a buzzword for social apps overall and has driven several trends in social shopping. Substack has several shopping-focused newsletters with established online and IRL communities. Meanwhile, TYB, a shopping-rewards platform cofounded by apparel brand Outdoor Voices' Ty Haney, is focused on building and maintaining communities of superfans with challenges and group chats.

Ultimately, every app is fighting for a share of the internet's most valuable commodity: consumers' time.

"I am willing to sacrifice that not every piece of content has something to buy in it because the opportunity set is so much larger if you can go deeper with people," Venz Box said.

• Social startups like Diem and Spill are tapping users as investors.
• Both are using WeFunder, a platform where everyday people can invest in early-stage startups.
• Users who invest in the companies also receive special perks.

Some early adopters of new social-media apps are getting more than just bragging rights.

Two early-stage social startups are opening up investment rounds to include the users of their apps (and other everyday investors). Diem, a social search platform powered by AI, launched its community round in February and is scheduled to close in May. And Spill, a visual conversation app centered on culture, founded by ex-Twitter employees, will launch its own community crowdfund in March.

"We've always wanted the community to be able to own a piece of the product," Diem CEO Emma Bates told Business Insider.

Both platforms are using WeFunder, an equity crowdfunding tool that is compliant with SEC regulations. WeFunder has been used by startups like fintech Mercury and app developer platform Replit to raise millions.

"What we have is a tool that allows you to let a larger number of smaller checks into the deal," said Read Ezell, director of fundraising at WeFunder.

Like angel syndicates, where angel investors pool their own money, community investors on WeFunder are represented by a single lead investor and receive a single line on a startup's cap table (a breakdown of who owns how much of a given company).

Diem's round allows users to invest starting at $100, while Spill is setting its entry point at $250.

Often, crowdfunding rounds listed on WeFunder accompany venture capital investment rounds.

"It's not a signal that you can't raise money," Ezell said. "It's a signal that you have another way to raise money."

For instance, Diem's community round is an allocation of its Seed Plus investment round, which closed with venture capital partners in June. One of those VCs, Charles Hudson (a managing partner at Precursor Ventures), is the lead investor for the WeFunder syndicate of community investors. That means Diem's WeFunder round offers community investors the same terms that Hudson invested on.

Diem and Spill have each raised over $5 million in venture capital, per the companies.

Ezell said crowdfunding can be "intuitive" for some social startups and consumer-facing businesses.

"For us, it just made sense," said Spill CEO Alphonzo Terrell, adding that users were asking to invest when the platform was still nascent. "We're a community-driven product and for a community that frankly doesn't get billed for in social media and also typically doesn't get access to these types of opportunities to be a part of an early-stage tech platform."

Since it launched, Spill has centered Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ communities on the app. Diem advertises its app as being for "girls, women, and gender-expansive people."

While Spill and Diem are inviting users to invest in the company at an early stage, other larger networks like Reddit have tapped users as investors. When Reddit was preparing to go public in 2024, it offered some power users priority access to buy stock at the IPO price.

What app users get in return

By investing in startups like Diem or Spill via WeFunder, users are entering a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE). In other words, if the startup goes public in the future, the users would be guaranteed stock. If the startup is acquired, community investors also receive returns.

For early-stage startups, seeing those returns could take a while. And there's the risk a startup won't successfully make an exit.

"The reality is that it's risky, but also the reality is that most investments are under $1,000 on WeFunder," Ezell said.

Beyond equity, Diem and Spill are also offering different perks for their community investors — clout being one of them. For instance, Spill will add "investor profile badges" to app users who participate in the round, as well as access to new features, exclusive events, and first-looks at company updates.

Diem is offering similar perks for investors that can be unlocked at different investment tiers. People who invest more than $250 can gain access to Diem events, for example, while people who invest more than $1,000 also receive company merch. (Investment perks are listed on the WeFunder investment terms.)

Investing in the future of social media

The current moment in social media is also fueling these startups' decisions to crowdfund. From Meta's changing policies to TikTok's uncertain future, many social-media users have been seeking alternative platforms.

"A lot of people are interested in supporting the next generation of tools that help us stay informed and connected," Terrell said. "Clearly, there's a desire for something different, something much better, and we think people who are participating in this round are going to be key voices and partners for us in that."

Diem and Spill aren't the first social platforms to use WeFunder, either. In 2023, Substack used WeFunder to raise $7.8 million from more than 6,000 participants. Then, in 2024, Beehiiv, another newsletter platform, raised $1 million from over 800 participants.

"From day one, we have always looked to our users to determine what we needed to build," Beehiiv's CEO Tyler Denk said. "They're a huge part of the success we've experienced, and I wanted to ensure they had an opportunity to share the upside with us as we build this thing."

Other startups, like Fanbase, a social network focused on creator monetization, have used StartEngine, another startup crowdfunding platform.

• Meta filed a lawsuit this week accusing a man of selling Instagram handles and "unauthorized" account reinstatement services.
• The Instagram usernames were listed at prices ranging from $700 to $50,000, the lawsuit says.
• Meta also filed another lawsuit this week, alleging a different user engaged in similar violations.

Meta is cracking down on the buying and selling of Instagram accounts and "unauthorized" account reinstatement services.

In two separate lawsuits this week, the company took aim at people it alleged had violated its terms by offering these kinds of services. It's the first time Meta has taken this type of legal action in the US.

On Tuesday, Meta filed a lawsuit in California against Daniel Folger, a photographer and entrepreneur. The lawsuit alleges Folger "sold Instagram usernames and unauthorized Instagram account reinstatement services."

The suit says Folger began offering and selling Instagram usernames in 2022 and continued those activities through February 2025. Prices for the usernames ranged from $700 to $50,000. The lawsuit includes documentation of content posted to Folger's accounts, including a list of usernames for sale.

Instagram's terms of service include a clause saying users cannot "buy, sell, or transfer any aspect of your account," including usernames.

Meta's suit also alleges Folger "conspired" with a Meta contractor to "misuse the internal Meta appeal channel in order to circumvent Meta's enforcement action and reinstate" an account that Meta had disabled.

Folger did not respond to a request for comment.

Meta filed two similar lawsuits this week

On Tuesday, Meta filed a similar lawsuit against Idriss Qibaa, alleging he sold unauthorized Instagram services like "the ability to disable user accounts" and "user account reinstatement services." The suit also accuses Qibaa of selling "fake engagement services intended to artificially inflate followers on Instagram user accounts."

The Meta suit references a 2024 podcast in which Qibaa agrees with the host's description of him as a "professional when it comes to the banning and unbanning of Instagram accounts."

"During this podcast, QIBAA outlined an extortion scheme he has perpetrated against multiple victims," the suit continues.

Qibaa has been indicted in a separate criminal case, scheduled for trial in May, alleging that he sent messages threatening to injure or kill two victims, the Meta suit says.

Business Insider was not able to reach Qibaa. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The market for Instagram usernames

The underground market for Instagram services is nothing new. Last year, BI reported that there were several Facebook Groups where users were trading monetization-eligible accounts. At extremes, some Instagram users have had their accounts held hostage for ransom or faced harassment.

But these new lawsuits suggest Instagram is taking a harder line — at least on the people it believes are the worst offenders.

"We will consider all enforcement and legal options to protect people on our platforms," a Meta spokesperson told BI. "These particular abuses target users and violate our policies, and we are committed to countering these malicious activities."

• VC firm Slow Ventures has raised $60 million to invest in content creators.
• The firm will make $1 million to $3 million bets in exchange for a 10% cut in creator businesses.
• The firm targets creators with niche audiences, superfans, and big ideas about where to innovate.

YouTubers are the new Stanford dropouts.

Slow Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, launched a new $60 million fund focused on investing in content creators. It's looking for creators with the "DNA of a YC founder," Megan Lightcap, a partner leading Slow's creator fund, told Business Insider, referring to Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator.

"Everyone has looked at creators and the businesses that they're building and been like, 'Oh, it's cute. It's like a little lifestyle business,'" Lightcap said.

However, Lightcap poses that some of these businesses are venture scale.

"There's going to be a subset of creators that are very entrepreneurial, have deep trust and expertise in a specific vertical, and are builders," Lightcap said. "They're founders."

Investing in creators' businesses isn't new for Slow. The firm has been testing the model for a few years. Other companies like Jellysmack and Spotter have also offered capital to creators with a focus on licensing their content catalogs. But this is the first time Slow is setting up a dedicated fund for creator deals with participation from institutional investors like MIT and the University of Michigan.

For Slow, investing in a creator does not mean simply getting a cut of their media business built on YouTube ad revenue and brand deals. It's about getting a share in the profits of whatever spin-off businesses they launch, such as a gardening influencer selling rakes or a food creator publishing a cookbook.

The company said it will invest between $1 million and $3 million to get a 10% stake in creator holding companies. Those holding companies will house all the different business lines an influencer might dabble in.

Lightcap said the capital allows for flexibility, letting creators "test and experiment" with content and production, hiring teams, and building broader businesses.

Where Slow's money will flow

What type of creators is Slow looking for? Not a generalist like MrBeast, but rather, a content creator passionate about a specific niche who understands what products are missing from that category.

Slow's target creator sees that opportunity, knows that their audience feels similarly, and says, "'I'm going to build it,'" Lightcap said.

While some creators may be more focused on platform ad revenue or brand deals, Slow is looking for creators whose businesses are outgrowing the traditional influencer career.

"They look at the media not as the end, but as the means to an end, and think of their content and community, really, as this strategic asset on which they can launch other types of companies," she said.

Creators with a substantial YouTube business are top of mind for Slow.

"There's many ways these creators can emerge," Lightcap said. "Most of them end up in some way, shape, or form on YouTube."

Lightcap highlighted Slow's previous investment into YouTube creator Marina Mogilko's business as an example of a successful deal.

Creators as a new type of founder

Investing in a YouTuber could seem risky to a traditional VC. After all, your return leans on the performance and durability of one individual.

But Lightcap said the situation isn't much different than betting on a startup founder, who often carries the future of a company on their back for years.

She said creators can actually be much easier to conduct due diligence on than a startup that's just getting off the ground. A creator's audience, the presence of superfans, and the ways they make money are easy to vet.

"As seed investors, we're so used to looking at an opportunity with zero data," Lightcap said. "When you're looking at creators at this level, there's actually a ton of stuff to diligence."

At the end of the day, there's precedent for media figures growing niche content into big businesses, with lucrative exits.

"You don't have to squint very hard to be like, 'Would a creator holding company ever IPO?'" Lightcap said. She pointed to Martha Stewart and the Oprah Winfrey Network as examples of media players that successfully scaled. "It's not something that we're necessarily underwriting today, but it's going to be very interesting to see how this all changes."

• Hangout, a new social music platform, launched in November.
• The platform now has over 1.1 million users, who are able to stream over 100 million songs.
• In August, the company closed its $8.2 million seed investment. Here's the pitch deck it used.

Joseph Perla thinks the way we listen to music is due for a shake-up.

Spotify, the largest music streaming service, has been focused on AI and podcasting. And TikTok, a breakthrough platform for music discovery and marketing, could still be banned in the US.

Perla, CEO of social music platform Hangout, wants to make the music listening experience more human.

"I'm building a whole new kind of social platform that's focused on connection and unity and harmony," Perla told Business Insider. "And I'm doing that with music."

Hangout, which launched in November, lets people connect around music on both web and mobile through listening rooms where users can queue songs, chat, and discover new music. Hangout has surpassed 1.1 million registered users since launching, according to the company.

It's not the first time Perla has built a music product. He was the VP of technology of Turntable.fm, a similar music service where users could collaboratively play music in chat rooms. Turntable's original iteration ran from 2011 to 2013. It was relaunched by CEO Billy Chasen in 2021 with backing from Andreessen Horowitz. Chasen's version has since rebranded to Deepcut.fm.

When building Hangout, Perla said it was crucial to secure rights to music off the bat. Through partnerships with labels like Sony Music, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Merlin (a digital rights agency that covers independent labels), Hangout is able to host over 100 million full-length tracks on the platform. Users can also connect their Spotify, Apple Music, or Soundcloud accounts.

"That means that we have content for everybody's taste, everybody's genre," Perla said. "As we scale up the platform to more and more users, we will have a Hangout for you that fits your exact taste, that has five other people that love exactly that kind of thing that you like."

Hangout has both public and private rooms where users can listen to music, but private hangouts do require a paid subscription. The company is using a freemium model for monetization early on, with paid subscriptions running between $5 and $50 a month.

Perla said Hangout also wants to be a hub for music marketing as artists prepare to launch albums and tours. It has already hosted listening parties and AMAs with musicians, such as Empire of the Sun, Greta Van Fleet, and Cage the Elephant.

Hangout's launch comes at a time when consumers are craving new social networking platforms.

"We don't want to be the everything platform, but we think what we've made a much healthier way of having a social experience," Perla said.

Other social music apps have also gained traction in the past few years, like group-listening platforms Stationhead and social music feed Airbuds. Spotify itself has made a play in social listening, launching a feature called Jam in 2023 that lets groups sync their listening. It has collaborative playlists, too.

In August, Hangout announced that it had closed a $8.2 million seed round from investors such as Founders Fund, Elizabeth Street Ventures, and 468 Capital.

Read the 26-page pitch deck Hangout used to raise capital:

Note: Hangout has redacted details and amended some pages so that the document could be shared externally.

Hangout's pitch deck was used in 2024.

It starts by stepping back in time to the 2000s.

"In the 2000s there was pent up demand for on-demand solo streaming," the slide reads. It then lists several services that were popular at the time: Napster, Pirate Bay, Kazaa, LimeWire, eDonkey, Morpheus, and SoulSeek.

Then came Spotify.

The slide says that Spotify "captured the opportunity."

Hangout also references another music app called Groovy.

"Over a decade later, Groovy proved there was pent up demand for social listening," the slide says.

The pitch deck page says that Groovy had 250 million users.

Then Groovy shut down.

"Due to piracy, Groovy app abruptly shut down by the music industry in 2022," the page reads.

Hangout introduces its product-market fit: group streaming.

"We will capture latent demand for group streaming," the slide says. It also lists several music apps that were shut down, including Perla's previous venture, Turntable.

Hangout has established relationships with some of the largest music labels.

"Nobody social licensed all the music … until us," the slide reads. It also says that Hangout has over 100 million full tracks on its platform.

It cites TikTok's music app, too.

"Even TikTok couldn't get global licenses for its new music service," the slide reads.

TikTok shut down its music streaming app in 2024 and never launched it in the US.

Hangout describes itself as a social platform.

"We are building the next generation social goliath," the slide reads, adding that social platforms primarily have not had "music at the core."

The slide includes an axis of social and entertainment platforms, including Discord, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Hulu.

Hangout also has an enterprise application.

Hangout@Work is the startup's enterprise offering. It pitches the product as "the soundtrack to a stronger team at work."

The slide includes testimonials as well.

Hangout introduces Joseph Perla, its founder and CEO.

Perla includes his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his career highlights. He worked at Turntable, Facebook, and Lyft.

It also lists its team and advisors.

Then the deck goes into product screenshots.

Hangout also has a Discord integration.

The pitch deck highlights the platform's Gen-Z users.

And it includes feedback from a user about using Hangout at work.

It also includes a chart about its "net promoter score."

In this slide, Hangout ranks itself against other social and streaming platforms, including Instagram and Spotify. NPS scores are used to gauge customer loyalty.

Then the deck goes into its partnerships and marketing strategy.

Here's what it lists about its partnerships with the music industry:

• Live online events every week featuring artist album releases, tour promotions, merch sales, etc
• Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, and Merlin association of hundreds of labels
• thousands of artists
• hundreds of millions of superfans
• billions of social media followers
• billions of $ in marketing budgets

It will use LinkedIn to promote its Hangout@Work product.

Here's what the slide lists:

• Founder-Led Social Selling → Engage directly with HR leaders, team managers, and founders through authentic posts
• Viral Team Culture Content → Share engaging videos, polls, and memes around music at work to drive organic
• Employee Advocacy → Encourage early adopters to share their team's Hangout experience on LinkedIn and Twitter
• Cold Outreach + Warm Engagement → Leverage Twitter DMs and LinkedIn

As it wraps up its deck, Hangout looks out to the months ahead.

"What will we get after launch in the first 12 months?" the slide desk asks.

Here's the "expected 2025 traction" it lists:

• 10 million MAU
• 10,000 companies onboarded for Hangout@Work

• 1-3 million SaaS licenses

  • Only 50,000 to

    break-even

• $10-90M/year in revenue

It also lays out a global growth road map.

Hangout launched its product in 2024 and plans to launch its avatar store in 2025. It also plans to raise a Series A investment round in 2025, while eyeing an IPO down the road.

The deck concludes with "potential final outcomes."

It lists two scenarios:

Target Case

• 1-5 billion users
• $30-200 billion/year in revenue
• 2 million paid corporates
• $100-800 billion valuation
• Comps: TikTok, Netflix, Meta

Moderate Case

• 100 million users
• $1-10 billion/year in revenue
• 200,000 paid corporates for Hangout@Work
• $5-50 billion valuation
• Comps: Discord, Spotify, Apple Music, Slack

Hangout concludes its pitch deck with contact information for Perla and a thank you.

• A former director at Meta filed a lawsuit against the company on Monday.
• The plaintiff, Kelly Stonelake, alleges sex discrimination and harassment.
• Stonelake also alleges Meta has a "toxic pattern of silencing women who identify problems."

A former Meta employee filed a lawsuit Monday alleging the tech giant has a "toxic pattern of silencing women who identify problems."

Kelly Stonelake, a former director of product marketing for Meta's Reality Labs org, filed the lawsuit Monday in Washington state. The suit alleges sex discrimination and says Stonelake faced retaliation for "opposing Meta's illegal activity and violations of public policy."

Meta declined to comment on the suit.

Stonelake joined the company in 2009, back when Meta was still called Facebook. The lawsuit says she was laid off in January 2024 following a medical leave. In the complaint, Stonelake says she faced sexual harassment at the company and alleges she was sexually assaulted by a former boss at Facebook.

The lawsuit accuses Meta of wider problems, as well. The suit says that within the Horizon World org, female employees "reported feeling their voices were considered less valuable and that differential treatment was openly permitted." Stonelake's complaint says female staffers raised specific safety concerns in 2022 that were dismissed by Meta's "all-male Horizon product leadership team."

Specifically, the suit says that a female colleague of Stonelake's had advocated for a "quality pause" before expanding Horizon World to teens. She had expressed concerns that the product did not have "adequate" parental and safety controls and did not meet product quality, the suit says. Horizon World is a virtual-reality video game played on Meta's Quest headsets.

Stonelake escalated the concerns to Horizon's leadership, and was later excluded from weekly leadership meetings, the suit says.

"I was the only voice in a room that was otherwise all men advocating for a change," Stonelake told Business Insider in an interview.

She told BI she filed the suit to hold Meta "accountable to responsible, durable business."

"Discrimination in tech isn't just an ethical issue — it's anti-innovation, it's irresponsible, and it causes harm on a scale that only technology companies can achieve," Stonelake told BI.

She is seeking lost wages, as well as damages for emotional distress and attorney fees.

"This lawsuit has been a long time coming," Stonelake told BI. "As I've gotten further and further away from Meta, it's become clearer and clearer that in order to get accountability, I need to file a lawsuit."

The lawsuit comes at a charged moment for Meta, which recently announced sweeping changes to its content moderation and workplace policies.

In January, the company updated its hateful conduct guidelines to permit certain previously prohibited content. Meta also rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and eliminated its network of third-party fact-checkers.

Shortly after rolling out these changes, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on the Joe Rogan podcast, where he advocated for more "masculine energy" in corporate culture.

"I do think that there's just something … having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive," Zuckerberg said on the podcast.

Zuckerberg acknowledged on the podcast that women face systemic barriers in tech companies. He also said corporations had overcorrected in trying to address those challenges. The tech industry swung too far toward viewing masculinity as "toxic," he said.

These policy shifts come amid broader political pressures and changes.

The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg had met with Trump advisor Stephen Miller at Mar-a-Lago late last year, and that Miller had warned that Trump would target DEI culture at companies like Meta. The report said that Zuckerberg blamed Sheryl Sandberg, Meta's former chief operating officer, for the company's inclusivity initiatives.

Zuckerberg denied the New York Times report on Threads, praising Sandberg as "a legend in the industry." Sandberg responded by thanking him for his friendship. Several prominent female executives at Meta including Naomi Gleit, its head of product, and Iska Saric, Zuckerberg's head of communications, also defended Zuckerberg on the platform. Gleit called him a "champion of women."

"I used to think the gap between Meta's public statements and the internal experience of working there was a bug or a misunderstanding to resolve," Stonelake told BI. "Now I believe it to be a feature, a core strategy of how Meta is able to keep really good people focused on really harmful work."

• Alex Hofmann founded 9count, a social media app conglomerate, in 2019 after leaving Musical.ly.
• Hofmann is also an investor in several social startups and is betting on "private social networks."
• Here are five trends Hofmann thinks will define the future of social networking.

We're still waiting for the next big thing in social media.

Clubhouse's social audio moment didn't stick, BeReal's gamified photo-sharing faded, and while TikTok's impact on social media is indisputable, its uncertain future has consumers hungry for new apps.

So, what comes next?

Alex Hofmann, the CEO of the social-media conglomerate 9count, is betting on a new wave of private social networks that prioritize friends over media.

Hofmann founded 9count in 2019 after leaving his post as president of Musical.ly (now TikTok) in 2018, after ByteDance acquired it. 9count's portfolio includes mostly mobile apps, such as dating app Wink, friend-making app Soda, and LGBTQ+ social network Lex (9count acquired Lex in 2024).

Hofmann said that with influencers, brands, and ads competing for attention on social platforms, consumers aren't seeing or engaging with their own personal connections as much as they may like.

"We are seeing a shift from social networks to social media to media," Hofmann told Business Insider.

As a result, he thinks there's room in the market for more straightforward social networks.

"We finally are at a tipping point because of frustration with policy changes, algorithmic feeds, privacy breaches, excessive commercialization," Hofmann said. "It's time for a change. It's time to build better products."

Beyond connecting people with their friends via private networks, Hofmann sees potential in apps serving niche communities and helping people meet IRL.

Outside 9count's own portfolio of apps, Hofmann has also invested in new social apps as an angel investor and via his VC fund Progression. Those investments include Mozi, an app for close friends cofounded by Ev Williams; Bond Social, a decentralized social network; and Girlgroup, a community and events app for women founded by 9count employee Shoshana Cooper.

Here are five trends in social media Hofmann is eyeing:

1. There's a need for apps serving niche communities. As platforms like Meta or TikTok scale to billions of users worldwide, the apps often prioritize the masses (and advertisers) over smaller segments of users. Hofmann pointed to Girlgroup and Lex as examples of apps built for niche communities, whether that's young women in a specific city or for the LGBTQ+ community.
2. People want to connect IRL. "The big trend that we are seeing is that after Covid, there's a big desire really to meet more in the real world," Hofmann said. Several IRL-social apps raised millions of dollars in 2024, such as 222, Pie, and Posh.
3. Dating apps will need to move past swiping. Hofmann compared the current model of dating apps to Zillow — you can look at a house, but you can't really discern the energy, aura, or feel of the house with just pictures. "The dating app that will be successful is one that is able to mirror that energy in a digital format," he said. Gen Z will also define the next wave of online dating, Hofmann added, particularly how younger users are more interested in sparking a connection, even if just platonic, than finding an instant date.
4. The next big thing won't be a TikTok copycat. "Seeing so many TikTok clones is interesting, and it's a good way for new entrepreneurs to learn how to build products," Hofmann said. "But I hope that these products will either grow into something much bigger, much different, much more valuable to the user base."
5. More new social apps will become pay-to-play or offer freemium models. Public social-media apps usually go after advertising as a primary revenue model and are free to use. Hofmann is bullish on private social networks that instead use subscriptions, paywalls, and freemium models. "Some people believe that that would not be scalable, but the numbers so far show that it's actually quite possible," Hofmann said. He pointed to Duolingo as a successful example of a freemium model, and added that Girlgroup has a paid membership.

While Hofmann wants to see innovation in social apps — either via 9count or his investments — he knows very well that the consumer social landscape is volatile.

"The chance to build a successful product in the social-media space is very small," Hofmann said.

• Meta is offering creators thousands to post exclusive short-form videos on Instagram reels.
• The deals require creators to post a certain number of reels on Instagram each month.
• Read the terms in the contracts Instagram sent creators.

Instagram wants to be the first place creators go to post short-form videos.

And it's attempting to do so with piles of cash.

With TikTok's US future in limbo, Meta has been contacting creators and their teams with deals offering thousands of dollars in exchange for exclusive video content on Instagram reels. The payouts described to Business Insider ranged from $2,500 to $50,000 a month and required the content to be exclusive to Instagram for three months. The Information first reported on the program last week.

BI viewed contracts and spoke with several talent managers whose clients have received these offers. The managers requested anonymity to protect business relationships. Their identities are known to BI.

Typically, the deals are being sent to creators with more than 1 million followers on TikTok.

Not every contract is the same. One manager told BI they couldn't see a clear pattern as to why some creators were offered more money than others.

The payouts are grouped into tiers:

• Tier 1: $50,000 a month.
• Tier 2: $25,000 a month.
• Tier 3: $15,000 a month.
• Tier 4: $5,000 a month.
• Tier 5: $2,500 a month.

But even the promise of a big payday hasn't been enough to lure in some TikTok creators. This underscores the challenges Meta may face in usurping TikTok's short-form dominance.

"To try and change consumer behavior, or at least the perceived acceptance of consumer behavior, by stemming down another platform, I just don't think is the right way of handling it," a second manager said.

Instagram is offering deals worth up to $300,000 over 6 months

Here's a glimpse into an offer that has been sent to several creators for a total of $300,000 over six months:

• Creators would be required to post new, never-before-seen short-form video content to Instagram as reels.
• Over the course of six months, creators would post at least 10 new reels on their Instagram accounts each month.
• This content must be exclusive to Instagram for three months.
• Videos must be at least 15 seconds and no longer than three minutes.
• Creators must post 25% more on Instagram reels than on their next-largest short-form-video platform.

• They must share two of the reels a month as an IG story.

• Once a day, they need to engage with fans via comments, shares, or replies.

• They must post twice a month on their primary platform (TikTok or YouTube), promoting their content on Instagram and encouraging their fans to follow them on Instagram via the link in their bio.

• Instagram may promote the creator's content through paid ads on TikTok, Google, and app stores.
• If creators meet these requirements, they will earn $50,000 each month for the duration of the six-month deal.

The second talent manager with knowledge of these deals said some of their clients turned down the offer, citing reasons like exclusivity and overall frustration with Meta. Some said posting multiple reels a day felt "cheugy," a Gen Z term for out of touch.

"It's not a good deal," the second manager said. "Having to track that you're posting 25% more to reels than TikTok makes this untenable."

The manager added: "Some clients are taking it because the money is good for them, and I've seen some clients pass."

Here are the terms for a second offer that has been sent to several creators for a total of $90,000 over six months:

• Creators would be required to post new, never-before-seen short-form video content to Instagram as reels.
• Over the course of six months, creators would post at least eight new reels on their Instagram accounts each month, totaling 48 videos.
• This content must be exclusive to Instagram for three months.
• Videos must be at least 15 seconds and no longer than three minutes.
• Creators must post more short-form video content overall on Instagram during this period than on any other platform, such as TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, or X.

• If creators meet these requirements, they will earn $15,000 each month for the duration of the six-month deal.

Meta is also offering bonuses to lure TikTok creators

Word is getting around about Meta's offers in the influencer industry, two talent managers told BI.

"Meta is being really bullish on locking these in," a third talent manager who has seen similar offers from Meta said.

This isn't the only trick Meta has up its sleeve to woo TikTok creators amid a still looming ban or sale.

Meta launched a "Breakthrough Bonus" program last week. The program pays "eligible TikTok creators to help jump-start their growth on our apps," a spokesperson told BI. The compensation is up to $5,000 within a three-month period for posting reels on Instagram and Facebook.

Meta declined to comment on the specifics of these deals.

At the Sax Restaurant and Lounge on the eve of Donald Trump's second inauguration, it seemed like business as usual for TikTok.

The wildly popular video app was sponsoring a Washington, DC, party for a gaggle of conservative influencers sporting bright-red Make America Great Again hats. Bryce Hall wandered around in a black bow tie as other creators sipped cocktails and danced to Don Omar's "Danza Kuduro." Guests combated the frigid temperatures outside with TikTok-branded beanies and earmuffs.

Amid the gaiety, it was easy to forget that just 24 hours earlier, the ByteDance-owned social media platform had briefly gone dark for its 170 million American users.

It was just one twist during a whirlwind January weekend that featured everyone from Neil Gorsuch to Trump to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What began with a bombshell Supreme Court decision on Friday morning culminated in TikTok CEO Shou Chew as a guest at Trump's inauguration, hobnobbing with tech leaders like Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai.

As TikTok continues to navigate a divest-or-ban law designed to target the company's connections to China, the app is back — for now. But the weekend left some feeling unsettled.

"This situation showed how quickly you can have something and then that something can be taken away," said creator Kyle Barber.

How quickly? Let's turn back the clock.

Friday, 10 a.m. ET: A decision comes down

After months of buildup, including a last-ditch attempt by the app to preserve its US presence, the Supreme Court dropped its opinion on TikTok Inc. v. Garland on Friday morning, ruling that a law forcing a sale of the app was constitutional.

TikTok then had 38 hours to broker a sale of its US assets or "go dark" when its service providers cut ties to avoid hundreds of billions of dollars in potential fines.

From the moment the court publicized its ruling, fear set in among some of the app's creators and partners. TikTok is often more than just a tool for mindless scrolling: It can be a source of substantial income for small businesses selling products or a platform to rocket-launch a career as a creator.

In spite of this, many TikTokers, advertisers, and other businesses had spent months shrugging off the threat of a shutdown. Internally, it was "business as usual," as one current TikTok staffer put it. The Supreme Court ruling changed all that.

"After the Supreme Court ruling hit and they still hadn't announced a buyer, it's like, OK, this thing could be gone," said Barber, who has around 40,000 followers on the app. "So immediately I had to go into emergency mode, and I was spending all this time trying to archive my content."

Some influencers had contingency plans in their contracts that dictated they would move sponsorships to other apps in the event TikTok went dark. Others spread out across different social platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and newcomers like RedNote.

To many in the TikTok community, it was still unclear what would happen next. A week earlier, a lawyer for the company told the Supreme Court that the app would "go dark" and essentially "stop operating" on January 19 without legal or political intervention.

When Chew finally emerged with a TikTok message around 12:30 p.m. on Friday, he didn't say what would happen over the weekend.

He said TikTok had been fighting to "protect the constitutional right to free speech" for Americans who use the app. "On behalf of everyone at TikTok and all our users across the country, I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States," he said.

Users flooded the comments section of Chew's video. One pleaded with Chew not to sell the app: "[I]t won't be the same."

"TikTok has gotten me through some of my darkest moments in the past 5 years," another commented. "I'm eternally grateful for my time here and will miss it 💔"

In the hours after the ruling dropped, some staff told BI they felt unclear about what would happen next. The company told US employees a few days earlier that their employment, pay, and benefits were secure, and offices would remain open even if the situation wasn't resolved before the January 19 deadline. The company sent a message on Friday that linked to Chew's video and included some assurances about their employment, an employee said. (A TikTok spokesperson told Business Insider the company communicated regularly with employees throughout the weekend.)

The other TikTok employee felt there was no work to be done that day with the app's future hanging in the balance. (The staffers asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about their employer. Their identities are known to Business Insider.)

At 8:36 p.m. ET, the company issued a written statement about its plans — and said much of the uncertainty lay with the Biden administration.

"Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19," the statement read.

Saturday afternoon: Confusion swirls

On Saturday, TikTok's global e-commerce team sent out an "important notice" to its Shop agency partners, a group of vendors that work with merchants to sell products on the app.

The app would be suspended at 8:30 p.m. ET, according to a copy of the memo reviewed by BI, though agencies could continue to check orders and access other platform data. Some e-commerce partners who had spent weeks preparing for a potential app shutdown — with what they said was little guidance from TikTok — began chattering about the app's imminent demise, one Shop partner told BI. (They asked to remain anonymous to protect business relationships. Their identity is known to BI.)

But the memo appeared to be inaccurate. A few hours later, in a follow-up email, the company informed its partners that "an unauthorized individual sent an erroneous email about TikTok Shop's business service" and it would share "official company communications with users, creators, and partners when plans are finalized."

"No idea what is going on honestly lol," the Shop partner messaged BI after the second email went out.

Saturday around 10:30 p.m. ET: 'Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now'

On Saturday night, users were greeted with a pop-up when they opened the app: "We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable. We're working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned."

Delirious is one way to describe the app's final hours.

"This is not OK," Alix Earle told her 7.2 million followers in a video posted from bed before the shutdown, wiping tears from her eyes. "Someone's gonna have to, like, check me into a mental hospital."

Barber said he was struck with a feeling of, "What am I supposed to do?"

"You're scrolling through TikTok and you're seeing everybody saying their goodbyes in tears," he said.

Others confessed their secrets to millions on the app, while some took to comedy.

"They want to laugh up until the last second and I want to laugh, too," said Victoria Paris, a lifestyle content creator who has about 2 million followers. (Her content leading up to the ban included several videos in which she licked Jawbreaker candy.) "I've cried a million times on this app. You don't need to go out watching me cry. Let's go out watching some stupid shit. That's why we love this place."

Finally, around 10:30 p.m. ET, TikTok called it quits.

"Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now," a second pop-up read. "A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!"

Paris described the cutoff as "shocking and jarring."

Lukas Battle, a comedy creator with around 620,000 followers, said his feed was frozen on a video of Jane Goodall. "Every time I accidentally opened it," he said, "it would just be Jane Goodall and a piece of glass and a gorilla, and I was like, I love this. I kind of feel like this is a good representation of what's going on."

"Minutes before I was going to post my goodbye video, I couldn't, the app wouldn't let me," Barber said.

Sunday: TikTok's game of chicken

For about 14 hours, TikTok was dead.

Then, around 12:30 p.m. ET, it rose again.

"In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service," TikTok said in a statement, referring to partners like Oracle that it works with to store data and deliver videos. The company thanked Trump, whose inauguration was set to begin roughly 24 hours later.

Earlier that morning, Trump posted on social media that he would "issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law's prohibitions take effect."

The general feeling for users and creators was: Welp, that was a waste of energy.

"I thought it was going to be at least a full day, or even a week," Battle said.

"We all have whiplash from it coming back," Paris said.

Advertisers received an email from TikTok on Sunday that reaffirmed the app was coming back to a majority of US users and ad campaigns would resume over the course of the day. The email, a copy of which was reviewed by BI, also noted there may be some "temporary service instability" as things came back online.

Hours later, TikTok was sponsoring the glitzy MAGA crowd in the nation's capital.

"President Trump saved TikTok," CJ Pearson, a cochair of the Republican National Committee Youth Advisory Council, who helped organize the party, told CNN. "We have a lot to celebrate tonight."

Monday and beyond: What's next?

On Monday morning, Chew attended the inaugural festivities along with fellow tech executives including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. He sat on the dais next to Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's nominee to be the next director of national intelligence.

That night, around 8 p.m. ET, Trump dropped a new executive order instructing his future attorney general to delay enforcing the TikTok ban for 75 days. It was a sharp departure from his first term, when he signed an August 2020 executive order attempting to force TikTok out of app stores.

At the time, Trump said he was concerned that TikTok could become a disinformation tool for the Chinese Communist Party. He also feared that US user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Members of Congress raised similar concerns when they passed the 2024 divest-or-ban law. (TikTok has previously said that it does not share information with the Chinese government and that a US-based team operates its content-moderation work "independently from China.")

The next few weeks will be critical for TikTok and ByteDance as they fight for a deal that keeps the US and China happy — without destroying their business.

Trump has proposed a joint venture that would give a US entity 50% ownership in the company. Various potential bidders have also emerged, including the AI startup Perplexity, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, and the YouTube creator MrBeast.

Bill Ford, the CEO of General Atlantic, a ByteDance investor, told Axios a deal would get done that's "in everybody's interest" but that may be "short of divestiture." But if the whirlwind weekend is any indication, the final resolution is still up in the air.

While TikTok's app is back online, new users still can't download it from Apple or Google's app stores. Legal analysts say it may not return to stores anytime soon as the companies weigh the risks of working with ByteDance.

After a weekend of chaos, TikTok has once again gone back to "business as usual," one of the TikTok staffers told BI.

Even if Trump does manage to broker a deal with the blessings of ByteDance and the Chinese government, the chaos of the weekend has given many of TikTok's creators and partners pause.

They're back, but some say they have one foot out the door.

One TikTok Shop seller said on Sunday they were focused on diversifying their business to other platforms, as TikTok temporarily coming back online was just "kicking the can down the road again."

"This is definitely a changing moment," Paris said.

Will TikTok ever have the same juice? Will it be a zombie of its former self?

"I know it's going to be different somehow," Battle said. "This is a new chapter."

• Meta will pay TikTok creators who post on Instagram and Facebook with a new program.
• The "Breakthrough Bonus" will pay eligible creators up to $5,000 within a 90-day period.
• Meta will also ink "content deals" with TikTok creators, a spokesperson told Business Insider.

TikTok is back for now, but Meta is looking to get its creators to post on Instagram and Facebook.

Meta is paying "eligible TikTok creators to help jumpstart their growth on our apps," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider. The program began testing earlier this month.

Meta has dubbed the program the "Breakthrough Bonus." It allows creators to earn up to $5,000 within 90 days for posting reels to Facebook or Instagram. Eligible creators will also be given access to Facebook's content monetization program, which lets users earn money from posting videos, photos, and text posts.

According to Meta, to be eligible, creators must be adults based in the US, have an "existing presence on a third party social app" — like TikTok — and link to it in the application, have a professional Instagram or Facebook account, and not be participating in any of Facebook's other monetization programs.

Creators will then have to post at least 20 reels on Facebook and 10 reels on Instagram each month during the first 90 days in the program, as well as share content at least 10 days each month.

Bonuses have been Instagram's primary creator monetization option for reels and initially launched in 2021. The bonuses have undergone several changes. For example, the program was paused in 2023 and returned in the form of seasonal bonuses in 2024.

Meta will also soon ink "content deals" with some TikTok creators "to help grow their communities on Instagram and Facebook," the spokesperson said. This isn't the first time Instagram has done this. In 2021, Instagram paid select TikTok creators, including the "Sway Boys," for video content across features like Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.

Meta is also taking aim at another app owned by TikTok parent ByteDance that is subject to the same divest-or-ban law. This weekend, Meta announced it would launch a stand-alone video editing app for creators called Edits that could compete with ByteDance's CapCut.

• LGBTQ+ apps are seeing a surge of interest after Meta's content moderation changes.
• Business Insider spoke with several founders building apps about the influx of users.
• The apps are focused on safety, privacy, and community amid tech industry shifts.

Between Meta's changes to its content-moderation policies and the TikTok ban, the past week has left many social-media users questioning where to go next.

For some LGTBQ+ users, that's resulted in a search for platforms specifically designed for their community that offer both connection and safety.

BI spoke with three founders building apps for the LGBTQ+ community who said they'd seen a spike in downloads and new users this month.

"We've just been trying to stop the product from combusting because we've been having so many people come in," said Callum Smith, founder of Collective, a queer community and dating app where users can share photos, songs, GIFs.

One user on Collective posted this week that they were "slowly looking for options to shift from Meta."

Meanwhile, Lex, a queer community and text-based app that was acquired by 9count in September, also noticed a spike beginning in the second week of January. Jennifer Lewis, Lex's CEO, said the app saw a 2x spike in downloads following Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's announcement that the company would alter its content-moderation and community standards.

Meta's changes included updating its Hateful Conduct policy, which now allows "allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

"This is the most anti-LGBTQ announcement that a social-media platform has made in recent memory," Josh Helfgott, an LGBTQ+ advocate and content creator, told BI last week.

Meta told BI that its content-moderation policies had been too far-reaching in years past, and its updates draw a line between offensive speech and potentially dangerous speech. The company also continues to prohibit attacks on protected characteristics, including dehumanizing speech, calls for harm, slurs, and more, as well as maintain its bullying and harassment policies.

In May 2024, GLAAD, a nonprofit advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ representation in media, published its fourth annual Social Media Safety Index report, which said that anti-LGBTQ "rhetoric and disinformation on social media translates to real-world offline harms."

"What I felt, time again, is that Big Tech doesn't really cater to us because they don't care about us," said Carmen Hernandez, founder of Freddie. The app describes itself as "for the sapphic and trans community to find friends, events, and lovers."

Designing apps with safety in mind

As LGBTQ+ apps welcome new users amid changes happening across tech, safety and privacy are top concerns.

Freddie, for example, is integrated with the encrypted messaging service Signal for security and data privacy.

"That need for safety is really what I think people are coming to Lex for," Lewis said. "What we've been doing since the acquisition by 9count has been building our backend moderation practices, trust and safety, user verification, bad actor banning."

On Collective, one safety measure (in addition to a zero policy for anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric) is its new user review process, which can take up to 24 hours and looks at a user's digital footprint across the web.

"We are creating a safe space for queer people, which means we have bad actors who want to get in and do bad things," Smith said.

Meta apps are still a necessity for visibility

For these LGBTQ+ apps, Meta platforms like Instagram are likely to remain crucial tools for getting in front of new users, despite the content-moderation changes.

Boyan Golden, founder of Purr, a social app for queer women, nonbinary, and trans people that will launch later this year, said the moment is a double-edged sword.

On one side, Golden hopes Meta's changes show the need for more queer-led social-networking platforms. At the same time, Meta platforms are still the largest channels Purr has for spreading its brand.

"You could rely on more traditional advertising methods, but you'd have nowhere the same reach," Golden told BI.

Collective, Lex, and Freddie also each have Instagram pages that are used as a marketing tool to direct users to their apps.

"I'm personally deleting all my Meta accounts on Friday," Hernandez said, but the separate account for Freddie will keep posting. "We're going to keep it as a beacon."

• TikTok is veering toward a US shutdown after the Supreme Court upheld a divest-or-ban law.
• The app is set to leave app stores and may go dark on Sunday if its owner, ByteDance, doesn't divest.
• TikTok creators and their teams are tired from months of uncertainty, but cautiously hopeful too.

TikTok is in trouble.

The company is set to disappear from US app stores on Sunday due to a divest-or-ban law that requires its owner, ByteDance, to sell the app by January 19 or essentially cease operating in the country. TikTok may stop showing content in the US and "go dark" over the weekend.

For TikTok creators and their teams, ongoing uncertainty around the app's US future has sparked frustration and fatigue.

"We've been dealing with this for months," said Julian Andrews, founder of talent management firm Talentiish. "I just sort of want the situation to be over so we know how to move on."

Some in the talent community are cautiously optimistic that a solution will emerge to save TikTok. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to try to rescue the app once in office, though his options could be limited.

"So many of us are still holding out hope that it will work out," Barbara Jones, CEO of Outshine Talent, said.

Others aren't holding their breath and are instead focusing on established alternatives, such as Instagram reels and YouTube shorts, as well as challenger apps like Clapper, Flip, and RedNote.

"Many of our clients are making accounts on RedNote and Flip as well as downloading their data from the TikTok app," Jones said. "They are trying to be as prepared as possible."

Creators may be hesitant to commit to new platforms, however, when the advertising dollars are much more reliable on major players like Instagram.

Instagram is, for the most part, the platform of choice among those Business Insider spoke to who are pivoting from TikTok.

Fallen Media, which runs TikTok shows like "What's Poppin? With Davis!" said it will be heavily investing in Instagram reels, for example.

"I have suggested to my clients not to focus on any new platforms and focus on the tried and true," Andrews at Talentiish said.

In the meantime, there's still no clear answer as to what happens this weekend.

"The truth is we don't really know what's going to happen on Sunday, which I think is the crazy part," said Fallen Media CEO Sol Betesh.

Creators are exhausted and devastated to say goodbye to TikTok

As news stories around a TikTok ban swing between good news and legal defeats, some creators have sunk into despair. The Supreme Court loss on Friday hit particularly hard for those whose businesses depend on the app.

"The ruling is truly devastating for me as someone who built their platform starting on TikTok," said Sofia Bella, a TikTok creator with 4.8 million followers. "Losing the majority of my audience is a difficult reality to face, and while I'm doing everything I can to prepare, it's hard not to feel like I'm starting over."

Andrews said the job of talent manager has teetered between acting as a therapist and strategist for the creators they manage.

Some creators are actively fighting against a TikTok ban, including Vitus Spehar, who runs the news account @underthedesknews. Spehar has been covering breaking news and political developments around the divestment. They said Americans should call their senators and other representatives to demand action against the law.

Still, other creators who have experienced burnout from TikTok are welcoming a possible shift if the app goes down.

"Generally, the tone from most internet creators I've spoken to has been entirely apathetic," said Tati Bruening, a TikTok creator with 2.4 million followers. "The pacing of content creation for TikTok was a recipe for burnout."

Building a strategy for doomsday

Even as the creator economy braces for the loss of its favorite corner of the internet, this moment is a lesson for many.

"Stop building brands on social media that other people own," Jennifer Powell, a talent manager who works with creators like Tezza and Ty French, told BI. "This can and will happen again. Start your website, get newsletters going, blogs, use affiliates, turn it into a brand, and own your own little place on the web."

A TikTok ban could also be a gold rush for social media startups as they race to fill the void.

"There's never been a better time to start a creation or curation company," said Em Herrera, a former investor at Slow Ventures who recently founded a firm called Creator Venture Accelerator.

• TikTok faces a likely US shutdown after the Supreme Court rejected its appeal.
• Brands and marketers are preparing contingency plans to shift content from TikTok.
• Managers shared their plans, including new clauses in their campaign contracts.

Creators are finalizing their post-TikTok plans.

TikTok is hurtling toward a US shutdown after the Supreme Court rejected its appeal of a divest-or-ban law. The app may "go dark" entirely on Sunday.

Ahead of a likely ban, TikTok influencers and their teams are offering contingency plans to assure brands and marketers that sponsored posts can move elsewhere if TikTok abruptly closes.

"We haven't seen anybody try to kill a contract, thank goodness," said Jennifer Powell, a talent manager who works with creators like Tezza and Ty French. "The good news is that most of the brands came into this year cautious about putting all their eggs into the TikTok basket, knowing that this judgment was looming."

Songfluencer, a platform that facilitates influencer campaigns for music marketers, has a "platform uncertainty" guarantee that promises marketers that creators will automatically repost TikTok content to Instagram or YouTube shorts if TikTok goes down.

"We want to make sure clients are not scared to run campaigns on TikTok," Songfluencer's CEO Johnny Cloherty said. "All of the creators in our network must agree to this new policy during this uncertain season."

Talent-management firm CFG has also been proactive in including clauses in its contracts with brands that ensure campaigns can migrate to a creator's "next highest-engaged" platform.

Powell, similarly, said her team has offered to move content to an "equal value" social platform if a sponsored TikTok post disappears.

Some of these preparations began months ago.

Gregory Littley, a freelance creative director and content producer, has been working with brand partners and clients on campaigns that aren't so tied to TikTok since November, he said.

"The language has shifted," Littley said about campaign deliverables. "It starts to really focus on the content as opposed to where you're posting it."

"Many of our current campaigns in progress that involve TikTok are preparing contingency plans for changing deliverables to different platforms," said Barbara Jones, founder of Outshine Talent.

• Americans are rushing to download two Chinese social apps, days before a possible TikTok ban.
• Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 rose to the top spots on the Apple app store rankings on Monday.
• Both platforms could be subject to the same divest-or-ban law that's imperiling TikTok.

TikTok users are lamenting that the app could "go dark" in less than a week in the US due to a divest-or-ban law. At the same time, two other apps with Chinese owners have risen to the top of the Apple app store in the US.

On Monday, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, and Lemon8, an app with the same owner as TikTok, hit the top two spots on the Apple app store rankings.

Xiaohongshu functions similarly to Instagram, but with more commerce features, while Lemon8 has been described by creators as a Pinterest-like platform.

The rush to download these apps is a bit of a head-scratcher, as they could be subject to the same divestment requirements as TikTok if the US government chooses to target them. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act applies to social platforms owned by countries that the US government views as foreign adversaries. TikTok became a political target because its owner, ByteDance, is based in China, which the US government has labeled a foreign adversary and Congress views as a national-security risk.

TikTok is clearly subject to the divest-or-ban law, as it's named in the bill's text. But ByteDance is also named, which raises the question of why its other app, Lemon8, is suddenly surging in popularity.

Christopher Krepich, the communications director for the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, previously told Forbes the bill would ban Lemon8 unless ByteDance divested. A spokesperson for the committee did not immediately respond to Business Insider on whether it would apply to Xiaohongshu.

The law was written broadly and could be enforced on any company owned by a foreign adversary that permits a user to "create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content." That could include Xiaohongshu if the US government chose to target the app.

The law does have some exceptions, including apps where users "post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews." That suggests Chinese e-commerce platforms Shein and Temu would not be targeted.

ByteDance, Xiaohongshu, Apple, and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Why users are flocking to these two apps

It's tough to say exactly what's driving mass interest in Xiaohongshu and Lemon8. Some users may be flocking to the apps to find a replacement for TikTok, while others may simply like their product features. In December, Xiaohongshu had around 300 million monthly active users globally, Bloomberg reported.

Another possibility for the downloads surge is that TikTok users are choosing the Chinese apps as a tongue-in-cheek protest of the divest-or-ban law.

"It really is just retaliation towards the government in the simplest way, but in a way that feels very native to Gen Z," said Meagan Loyst, founder of the investor collective Gen Z VCs.

If millennials pioneered "slacktivism" with online petitions, Gen Z seems to be trying something new. You might call it "trolltivism."

"This is not the first time that trolling on a large scale has happened," Loyst said, citing the 2020 incident when TikTok users purchased tickets to Trump rallies. "It's trolling the US government."

• The reaction among creators to Meta's content-moderation changes has largely fallen along political lines.
• Some influencers worry the changes could cause harm to the LGBTQ+ community.
• Others questioned Meta's decision to feature more political content.

Getting "Zucked" — a term for having your account suspended or content removed due to community violations — is a staple in the creator lexicon.

Despite that, creators who spoke with Business Insider had mixed reactions to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plans to reduce content moderation in the name of free speech.

On Tuesday, Meta unveiled new policies that included winding down fact-checking, loosening content moderation, and introducing X-style "Community Notes."

The creator community largely reacted along political lines, with some left-leaning influencers expressing disappointment.

"This is really about just pandering to the Trump administration in a way that feels extremely obvious," LGBTQ+ advocate and "Gay News" host Josh Helfgott told BI.

Left-leaning filmmaker Michael McWhorter also said he felt the changes were catering to Trump and his MAGA base.

"You're not trying to balance things out," McWhorter said of Meta. "We are shifting to the other side of things."

Elsewhere, some right-leaning creators cheered the changes.

Christopher Townsend, an Air Force vet and conservative rapper with over 300,000 Instagram followers, told BI he thought the policy overhaul was "a great step toward the decentralization of information and the end to the control legacy media has had on the prevailing narrative."

Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted a video on Wednesday outlining how the new policies would impact creators. He said the company would correct its "over-enforcement" of content moderation and begin recommending political content again.

"If you're a creator who likes to post about political content, this should mean that you feel comfortable doing so on any of our platforms," Mosseri said. "We will now show political recommendations."

Meta didn't respond to a request for comment.

Some are wary of Community Notes

As part of the policy overhaul, Meta is getting rid of fact-checkers in favor of Community Notes in the style of Elon Musk's X. Users will be able to volunteer to contribute to Community Notes, which will appear on content when people with a range of different perspectives agree a correction is in order.

"Like X, it gives the user community more authority over the platform instead of biased third-party administrators," Townsend said.

McWhorter said that while Community Notes were a "great equalizer," he felt they were not an adequate replacement for fact-checking. He said he wished Meta would rely on a combination of both systems.

A former Instagram staffer told BI that they felt placing the responsibility to moderate content on users and creators "on a platform with massive global reach and historical harmful content issues" was a step in the wrong direction. They asked for anonymity to protect business relationships; their identity is known to BI.

Concerns about anti-LGBTQ+ discourse

Helfgott expressed concern about Meta's plan to decrease moderation around certain political topics. The company's blog post specifically noted immigration and gender identity as areas of debate where it plans to decrease restrictions.

Helfgott said that while Meta's plans were described in the language of "political discourse," he felt the changes could lead to bullying of the LGBTQ+ community.

Alongside Tuesday's announcement, Meta updated its Hateful Conduct policy.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation," the company wrote, "given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

"This is the most anti-LGBTQ announcement that a social-media platform has made in recent memory," Helfgott said.

While McWhorter told BI he felt his content had been Zucked — or unfairly suppressed — in the past, he said he'd prefer a stricter moderating system even if it had "flaws."

"I'd rather that I take the hit for a joke that it didn't understand than that stuff being allowed to be spread all over the platform," he said, referring to potentially harmful posts.

Meta's increased political emphasis marks an about-face

Some creators were flummoxed by Meta's about-face on the amount of political content it plans to recommend. The company had previously cut back significantly on promoting political content in feeds in recent years.

Malynda Hale, a creator and activist with 65,000 followers, said this change could benefit political creators but questioned the company's motives.

"I think the fact that Meta is going to be serving up more political content is actually positive for creators like myself, but I don't think it's with the intention to keep the community informed," she told BI.

She said she felt Meta wanted to boost engagement even at the cost of division and disagreement.

Despite some misgivings, the creators who spoke with BI said they weren't going anywhere.

"I'll work with the system as it's presented to me, and I'll find my way to work around it," McWhorter said. "I constantly have to do that on all different platforms."

Helfgott said he felt "handcuffed" by Meta because if he stopped posting on Instagram, he would lose out on millions of people seeing his content each month.

"Meta knows this," he said. "They know that creators may not like this, but we need the reach, and we will keep posting there."

• Instagram has shut down a program that paid creators for ads placed on their profiles.
• Meta began testing the program in 2022.
• Instagram has launched several creator-monetization tests since 2020 — and some haven't survived.

Instagram has ended a program that allowed creators to earn money from ads placed between content on their profiles, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

The Meta-owned platform began testing the program with US creators in 2022 and expanded it in 2024 to eligible profiles in Canada, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.

Meta will continue to place ads in between content on nonteen public Instagram profiles. Businesses will still be able to prevent their ads from running on specific profiles.

According to court documents filed in 2024, Instagram has generated billions in ad revenue for Meta. In 2022, when the platform began testing the ads-in-profile program, it generated $16.5 billion, the same court filing said.

This isn't the first creator-monetization program that Meta has tested and shuttered.

Other programs you may remember include:

• IGTV (Instagram's now defunct YouTube competitor) shared ad revenue with creators from 2020 to 2022.
• Instagram briefly had a native affiliate program between 2021 and 2022 that allowed creators to earn revenue from shopping tags on their posts.

The Instagram Reels Bonus, which paid creators a sum of money based on how their reels performed, was paused in 2023. It was reintroduced in 2024 as a series of limited-time bonuses.