Claims that TikTok had been sold circulated after the app went dark in response to a U.S. federal ban, then returned a short time later.

Disappointment, denial and confusion flooded US TikTok upon hearing that Chinese owner ByteDance planned to shut off the app by Sunday.

While TikTok remains hugely popular in Brazil, Indonesia and other markets, its 170 million users in the United States are its most valuable.

Shou Zi Chew was an intern at Facebook before he became Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest competitor as CEO of TikTok. Shou Zi Chew may be the CEO of Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest competitor, TikTok, but at the start of his career, he worked for Zuckerberg as an intern at Facebook.

A looming ban on TikTok set to take effect on Sunday presents a multibillion-dollar headache for app store operators Apple and Google.

Facebook went public in mid-2012 ... Chew was CFO of Xiaomi before joining Bytedance. He became chief financial officer of the Chinese smartphone giant, which competes with Apple, in 2015.

With popular applications missing from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the US thanks to a ban (which looks set to be repealed by President Trump once he is sworn in), Facebook and Instagram-owner Meta has swooped in to scoop up content creators left adrift.

Social media giant Meta has offered to pay up to $5,000 (£4,040) to popular creators in the United States who join Facebook and Instagram.

For Monika Scott and Robyn Mair, the last month has brought a whipsaw of emotions every time they log onto social media.

After officially increasing the allowed length of videos and adding a new editing tool, Meta recently began letting TikTok creators earn as much as $5,000 over three months for posting "Reels" to Facebook and Instagram.

TikTok went dark for a few hours in the U.S. before the ban was suddenly reversed Sunday. Here's what to know about President Trump's executive order.

Three days after ByteDance's TikTok went dark and then was quickly revived in the United States, users who deleted the app were anxiously checking iPhone and Android devices to find it still unavailable to be downloaded again.