China’s TikTok Generates More Revenue Via In-App Purchases than Major Social Media Platforms *Combined*

China-owned TikTok is trouncing its competitors in in-app purchases (IAPs), generating more revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 than its top four competitors combined.

TikTok, which is currently facing down a potential ban by the U.S. Congress, has long had an in-app purchase feature. Some of its competitors, including Facebook and Twitter, have only recently introduced such features, and have a great deal of catching up to do if they want to approach TikTok’s revenues.

Via Coinspeaker:

Besides Facebook, other American-based entities including Snapchat and Twitter also require a subscription from users. Per the data from Apptopia, Instagram generated about $1 million while Twitter raked in about $900,000. Snapchat has been offering IAP for a longer period of time and it currently rakes in an average of $125,000 per day.

While these figures serve as the start of something that may eventually prove to be sustainable for these firms, they are all lagging behind TikTok which generated more than $350 million from IAPs in the previous fourth quarter.

“TikTok has had IAPs [in-app purchases] since its very beginning and its app revenue last year was a whopping $1.5 billion,” Blacker says. “Its IAPs are similar to Facebook’s in that users pay for coins which can be used to tip and pay for things from their favorite creators.”

TikTok is under considerable public pressure due to its links to China, having already been banned on government devices in the U.S., Canada, Taiwan, and various other countries due to security concerns. Congress is currently considering a bill that would effectively ban the app for average American consumers, although it is being opposed by the ACLU, which argues that such a ban would violate the First Amendment.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.