Tik Tok rival Triller has been allegedly inflating its monthly user numbers. As reported by Business Insider, some former employees expressed disbelief over the user numbers published by the company.
Triller executives have not been reticent about their intentions to overtake TikTok. In fact with the recent press releases on user numbers, the short video app appears to be gleeful about it. Triller CEO Mike Lu said at TechCrunch Disrupt on September 15, 2020,
“We’re definitely on a rocket ship. It’s a true exponential curve in terms of our usage, in terms of our growth, and we don’t see that slowing down anytime soon.”
TikTok is bogged down in a legal battle with the President of the United States and Triller taking advantage of the situation, deployed the strategy of smash-mouth marketing. Surprisingly, Triller’s gambit appears to have thrived.
Last month, Teller announced in a press release that it had “over 100 million monthly active users” and “over 250 million downloads.” However, six former employees told Business Insider that the numbers were disputable based on their past experiences.
Triller, the Los Angeles-based short video app backed by media mogul Ryan Kavanaugh’s Proxima Media attracted many influencers and signed the TikTok star Charli D’Amelio and her family, last month. Back in December 2019, it said to have grown 500% organically year over year to 13 million monthly active users and 60 million total downloads. Triller CEO Mike Lu claimed that Triller became No.1 across 80 different countries at some point. In mid-August, President Donald Trump also launched his official Triller account to promote his political campaign.
On 15th September, it announced to hit 100 million monthly users and over 250 million downloads. A week later while announcing a partnership with the body-grooming company Manscaped, the company claimed to have more than 140 million users.
The pace and size of Triller’s user base have been the talking point by the company. Though Triller often positions itself as a different app than TikTok but is steadily working on the same set of influencers to get onboard that made TikTok popular. CEO Mike Lu describes that Triller “has always been around music, around content, and around creative discovery.” Meanwhile, Triller is in the process to raise another round of funding at a lofty valuation.
As reported by Business Insider,
“Four of the six former Triller employees Business Insider spoke with confirmed that they had access to the Localytics dashboard and remembered Triller’s MAU count ranging between 1 million to 2.5 million at the time. The other two said they remembered the MAU count being about that 1-2.5 million range at the time, but did not name Localytics in particular.”
None of the former employees understood the calculation behind 13 million active users in 2019. However, Lu told Business Insider,
“As for our users, we can validate each and every one of our 239M plus of them and have two separate third party analytics companies preparing independent analyses based on transparent data access.”
Tech Crunch first reported that the app store intelligence firm Apptopia estimated Triller app to be downloaded 52 million times since launch worldwide against the claims of 250 million times. It claims that the numbers published are inflated. However, Triller Threatened to sue the analytic firm over false information. But soon, Apptopia retracted its estimate after getting in touch with each other through a mutual investor. Now, the two companies plan to co-publish report on Triller’s data based on Apptopia’s final findings.
On the other hand, Sensor Tower estimates also differ from the company’s claims. Sensor Tower data indicates Triller had reached 45.6 million total global installs since its launch. The Sensor tower explains that the discrepancies could have to do with how Triller calculates its installs. Some companies consider different forms of installs like re-installs, updates, and direct installs of Android APKs whereas the third party doesn’t.
Amidst the dispute, Triller partnered with the digital advertising platform Consumable which will give the short video app access to its 250 million users. This partnership will help Triller further monetize its platform by inserting programmatic advertising between Triller’s short-form video content units.
Mark Levin, CEO of Consumable said,
“This is an exciting partnership given our collective focus on delivering innovative, bite-sized content. It combines Triller’s short-form entertainment with Consumable’s short-form digital advertising to deliver the first social video discovery platform on media publisher websites.”
Triller CEO Mike Lu commented that this partnership will create scalable monetization opportunities and a sustainable profitable business model.
As reported by Adage, Triller recently started its first advertising service named as CrossHype. It will split the revenue with the influencers and alleges to guarantee the numbers of impressions. Triller videos can be shared with Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram. If influencers partners with brands through Triller, a portion of the reach will come from the audience across the platform. This can be one of the reasons to create Crosshype to assure brands about the potential size of the audience. However, industry players are skeptical about Triller’s Crosshype presentation. They believe that guaranteeing impressions with influencers can create pressure on them and incentivize bad habits like buying followers, inflating likes, and more.
However, the world of social media is full of surprises. If Triller’s play for TikTok talent works and viewers follow creators, then there is no stopping. It will also be important for Triller to soon prove the claimed statistics true to reclaim its credibility. Particularly, when the app is under the public eye and can capitalize on the hype surrounding TikTok.
For the uninitiated, Triller an AI-powered music video app that allows users to create high-quality videos in a matter of seconds. Users can use sounds from the Riller library, Spotify, and Apple Music. The short video app has entered 35 deals with Fortune 500 and established brands. Triller also brought on music artists like Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd, Marshmello, Lil Wayne, and Kendrick Lamar as investors and strategic partners last year. For more details, visit www.triller.co
