TikTok might have been the world’s top app by downloads and shopper spending in 2023, nevertheless it was not the highest by precise utilization. Final 12 months, Fb once more maintained its No. 1 place by month-to-month energetic customers, adopted by different Meta-owned apps WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger — all of which have been forward of TikTok at No. 5. Now new knowledge signifies that TikTok’s development has began to sluggish, begging the query of whether or not the app’s transfer into e-commerce through TikTok Store is in charge.

Based on new knowledge from market intelligence agency Sensor Tower, whereas TikTok’s development stays constructive, that development is decelerating. In 2022, TikTok’s month-to-month energetic customers grew a median of 12% year-over-year per quarter, however this determine fell to three% year-over-year per quarter in 2023.

The change comes on the heels of TikTok’s launch of TikTok Store within the U.S.

The video app began testing Shop in the U.S. in November 2022 and people assessments expanded at first of final 12 months as extra manufacturers got here on board, together with PacSun, Revolve, Willow Boutique, and sweetness model KimChi Stylish, amongst others. Whereas the Store didn’t “officially” launch in the U.S. until September 2023, it was solely considered one of a number of efforts to translate the affect of TikTok movies — primarily the entire “TikTok made me buy it” meme — into real-world gross sales.

Final summer time within the U.Ok., for instance, TikTok experimented with an in-app shopping section called “Trendy Beat,” which provided merchandise offered by TikTok mum or dad ByteDance. TikTok additionally presents an associates program that permits creators to earn commissions from merchandise, as the AP and others have reported.

However sellers’ embrace of the procuring platform has began to result in complaints, as Business Insider noted in November, with some lamenting that TikTok Store was turning the app into an “ad-filled wasteland” and a “dystopian” house. Elsewhere on the internet, Redditors have been debating whether or not TikTok Shop has “ruined” the app, which is now crammed with “people dropshipping/selling cheap products,” as one Reddit person put it.

“Personally, I’m starting to get really annoyed by how almost every other video on my [For You Page] is someone overhyping a product from the Shop feature to try to get it to go viral and make a lot of commissions,” wrote Redditor u/megg-salad-sammich in September. “It’s great that it’s a new avenue for creators to make money, but I find myself scrolling less and less because I know pretty much every video is just trying to get me to buy some random thing,” they mentioned.

A search throughout Reddit finds many more threads complaining of the identical factor all through final 12 months — saying how TikTok is “annoying” now due to TikTok Store and seeing adverts each few movies is a irritating expertise.

Whereas TikTok customers are adapting to their favourite social community turning into an internet mall, TikTok’s Store Vendor app, which powers its e-commerce initiative, has grown.

Sensor Tower knowledge signifies the Store Vendor’s development has been “robust” because the fourth quarter of 2022, rising 230% year-over-year as of the fourth quarter of 2023. Nevertheless, the app has solely a fraction of TikTok’s energetic person base — at the moment 1.4 billion as of the primary quarter of this 12 months. Store Vendor, in the meantime, has simply round 6 million month-to-month energetic customers, the agency reported.

Instagram may in the end profit from the person frustration round TikTok Store, on condition that the Meta-owned app removed its own Shop tab in January of last year and killed off live shopping in March. This might probably make it extra acceptable to these eager to keep away from extra direct calls to motion to buy in-app.

Meta’s transfer was triggered by broader business developments, which appear to not bode properly for TikTok Store’s future. Stay procuring had blossomed in the course of the pandemic, and e-commerce gross sales skyrocketed. However when issues returned to regular, social commerce (together with reside procuring) was discovered to have made up only around 5% of total e-commerce sales within the U.S. as of 2022. That appeared to point that U.S. shoppers might not have been as primed to buy straight from movies, although they are obviously still influenced by online trends.

Nevertheless, customers aren’t but so upset with TikTok Store as to desert the app for Instagram Reels.

Sensor Tower discovered that Instagram’s month-to-month energetic person development has been comparatively constant at “mid-single digits” and hasn’t been considerably impacted negatively or positively because the launch of the TikTok Store Vendor app.

Knowledge from one other agency, Appfigures, additionally helps this conclusion however provides that, though TikTok’s income has been rising, its downloads have been stagnant or dropping greater than rising — a pattern that’s been happening for over a 12 months now, together with each globally and within the U.S.