"The current king of social media is the short-form video platform TikTok. It's where trends are forged, news is broken, and opinions spread. Owned by China's ByteDance, the app has an estimated 1.99 billion users-33% fewer than Facebook's three billion-and yet Meta is desperately trying to mimic TikTok's features in its apps (particularly Instagram). But despite its popularity, TikTok has been under siege in 2025."
"Skylight Social, better known as Skylight, is a baby in the social media world. It didn't exist until earlier this year, after TikTok was briefly taken offline in the United States ahead of the government ban. The platform, which is currently accessible through dedicated Skylight iOS and Android apps, went live in April. It is the brainchild of a two-person team, CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer. But it also has a big-name backer behind it: Mark Cuban."
TikTok dominates short-form video with about 1.99 billion users, while Meta copies TikTok features in apps like Instagram. TikTok faced a potential U.S. ban in 2025 that threatened American creators' incomes and could force ownership changes affecting the U.S. algorithm and content discoverability. Concerned creators are moving toward Skylight, a new short-form video platform launched in April and developed by CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer with investor Mark Cuban. Skylight uses the decentralized Authenticated Transfer Protocol (AT Protocol), the same protocol behind Bluesky, offering different ownership and interoperability dynamics compared with TikTok and centralized platforms.
Read at Fast Company
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