President Donald Trump has joined Triller, a rival to the video sharing app TikTok that he wants ban in the US. First noted by New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, Trump’s Triller account (@donaldjtrump) has about 3,500 followers, and his introductory video has more than 590,000 views.
The intro video features clips of the president and audio clips of him saying “I’m a professional at technology,” and “nobody can do it like me.” The other two videos on the account as of Saturday afternoon were a clip of the president making a short speech in which he says “Joe Biden has no clue,” and another clip mocking the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Over the past few weeks, as the Trump administration has continued its push against TikTok in the US, Triller is one of several similar apps to see a sharp uptick in users, with more than 700,000 downloads in the past month. TikTok said in April it had hit 2 billion downloads globally, with 315 million downloads in the first quarter of 2020 alone.
Triller was founded a full two years before TikTok in 2015. Both apps allow users to create short music videos, but Triller features artificial intelligence technology to edit automatically, according to Digiday. Triller co-owner Ryan Kavanaugh told CNBC last week that they “see themselves as the adult version” of Tiktok, and consider the app “a stepping stone to Triller,” intended to be downloaded by an older demographic. Josh Richards, a popular social media influencer with more than 20 million followers on TikTok, recently took a position as chief strategy officer at Triller, signalling a potential migration of top talent if TikTok continues to be embroiled in security scrutiny. Triller has acquired streaming rights to the boxing match between Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. slated for November, a major get for the company.
