The TikTokalypse Is Nigh

Some influencers head back to YouTube

An estimated 50,000 major influencers post on TikTok — and now they’re facing a potential career crisis.

John Eringman, who talks to young people about financial independence, started uploading TikToks at the end of 2019. Today, Eringman has 1.3 million TikTok followers, but he’s been trying to diversify his following for months; he’s also on Instagram (107,000 followers) and YouTube (16,500 subscribers).

Now he might go live on TikTok and answer an incoming question by saying, “Hey, look at this thing I’ve created on YouTube. Check it out.”

The crossover isn’t easy, Eringman tells b. It’s harder to grow on YouTube and there’s far more competition in financial content. On the other hand, he feels YouTube’s payout is two or three times greater — and the demographics are less dominated by Gen Z. “It’s a better monetization strategy [and] I feel like I can tap into anyone there,” Eringman says.

Will TikTok Be Vine 2.0?

TikTok influencers’ fears have internet precedence. Vine launched in 2013, becoming the app for hundreds of millions of young people by 2015 — its short video loops were as creative and weird as TikTok’s are today — and then died in 2016.

Vine’s evaporation, and the wipeout of Facebook influencers from an algorithm change that drastically limited brand pages’ organic reach, highlight the industry’s impermanence.

“Platforms don’t really care if you are successful at monetization, I’ll be completely honest,” admitted former TikTok executive Sean Kim at SXSW in March. “North-star metrics are 100% focused on retention, [daily active users], publish rates, active days. Monetization of creators is not even on there. It’s like way, way, way down here. It’s like a little afterthought.”

If all your followers can disappear overnight, did you ever have a following at all?

This article first appeared in the b. Newsletter. Subscribe now!