TikTok's traffic has largely recovered in the US, approaching pre-shutdown levels despite recent app store removals and a temporary service interruption that caused an 85% drop in usage.

According to Cloudflare Radar's head of data insight David Belson, current DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains is only about 10% below pre-shutdown numbers. This indicates strong user retention despite the platform being offline for 14 hours and remaining unavailable on Google and Apple app stores.

While TikTok alternatives like RedNote saw brief traffic spikes during the shutdown, these gains quickly diminished once TikTok resumed operations. Belson noted that competitor traffic "fell rapidly once the shutdown ended, and has continued to slowly decline."

The shutdown occurred after the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring ByteDance to sell its US TikTok operations or face a ban. However, President Trump postponed enforcement by signing an executive order extending the deadline to April 5.

Several prominent figures have expressed interest in acquiring TikTok's US operations, including:

• Frank McCourt
• Kevin O'Leary
• MrBeast
• Potential partial ownership by Elon Musk or Oracle chairman Larry Ellison

Meanwhile, content creators have adapted by either maintaining their TikTok presence or diversifying to platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels. Meta has been actively courting creators with promotional deals to prioritize Instagram content.

Despite ongoing challenges and uncertainty about its future ownership, TikTok's resilient user base demonstrates the platform's strong position in the US social media landscape.

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