8 highlights
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It has been over a month since the Indian government banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese mobile applications, citing data security concerns. In nothing short of a scramble, technology companies big and small rolled out their own short-form video platforms to fill the TikTok-shaped hole in the Indian social ecosystem.
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But in all the noise, the metric that hasn’t been spoken about enough is user retention. Of the users who downloaded an app, how many returned the same day, how many came back after a week, and how many continued visiting even after a month.
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According to data from SimilarWeb, on an average, only 54% of the users who downloaded the app returned to the platform on day 1, a mere 13% came back on day 7, and by the end of the month, the percentage was down to just 1%.
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It’s not that retention of users is a new problem. Making users stick to your product is a problem as old as capitalism itself and TikTok struggled with it a lot more than the others.
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In June, about 26 percent of new TikTok users were still using the app a week later, according to estimates from App Annie, an app data firm. Facebook’s retention rate was 45 percent, Instagram’s was 44 percent and Snapchat’s 32 percent. By September, TikTok’s rate had risen to 39 percent.
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Fads are quick to overwhelm but fade away just as quickly. You have to keep launching new features to keep things interesting and users hooked. Advertising plays a big role in driving downloads.
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What is alarming in the case of Indian TikTok clones, however, is that the beginning itself is unimpressive. And most companies neither have the technological wherewithal nor the money to make users stick to their platforms. The worst part is that these companies don’t even have time on their side.
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An investor who is keeping a close eye on the short-video app ecosystem says that the window of opportunity is just about six to nine months. That is probably how long it will take for a) TikTok to come back and b) winners and losers to emerge out of this sector.