Josh Richards wants TikTok fans to know that Triller is the way of the future! The 18-year-old has been named chief strategy officer for the rival social media platform and is excited to be migrating over after years of creating content on TikTok.
“We started hearing the rumors about TikTok in the media and news, and with that we kinda felt like it was our responsibility to go and find a place that would be safe for other creators, ourselves and definitely the number one focus, the people that follow us and are supporters,” Richards explains to Katie Krause. “So that started about three months ago. Our journey, I guess, was to find a safe place.”
That “safe place” was Triller, an app with a focus on those who are creating their own content.
“They just made creators feel welcomed,” Richards says of Triller. “They were listening to our ideas, which we hadn’t had on other platforms, so it was very refreshing.”
Richards describes Triller as “a music-based platform” that is “very creator friendly.”
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A lot of Richards’ focus is on monetization of his and others’ content.
“We’re going to be enrolling a new live streaming platform with a monetization with that as well as they have partnerships with many labels including Universal, Warner and Sony,” he explains. “Which allows us to actually use that music without having to pay any licensing fees. As well we can actually use the editing tools on Triller to create videos and post them on other platforms without getting copyrighted.”
Richards describes himself as “the inside guy for the creators,” serving as a liaison of sorts between creators and executives for Triller.
As for whether or not TikTok will be shutting down in the U.S. anytime soon, Richards says, “I think that anything is possible. But it was more than just TikTok being shut down. It was just it was the safety concerns. As a creator, as someone that cares for other creators, I wanted to make sure that all of our supporters were in a place where their data wasn’t being shared. And same with the creators.”
Richards doesn’t feel a particularly strong loyalty to the social media platform that helped to build his career as he felt they weren’t as inclusive.
“TikTok wasn’t very open to hearing our ideas a lot of the time and I feel like usually they were saying, ‘No, that can’t happen,’ or they were saying, ‘We’ll work on it,’ and it never came to be,” he says. “So that’s why when we talked to Triller, it was such a refreshing feeling.”
On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he plans to ban TikTok from the U.S. through executive action after the Chinese-made app has sparked concerns that China could collect Americans’ personal data. India has already banned the app.
