In a statement to Billboard, Triller CEO Mike Lu says there is no legal definition of monthly active users, and Triller will no longer share monthly active users (MAU) or daily active users (DAU) as they do not accurately represent the company’s value.
“There is no legal definition of MAU / DAU,” says Lu. ‘For example, if someone tries to compare TikTok’s MAU / DAU with us – which means they say we have the same definition of MAU / DAU – there is an inherent misunderstanding about Triller’s business and business model. It’s like trying to compare a fish and a bicycle. ‘
Triller, acquired by Proxima Media in October 2019, became known on the heels of its press release in December 2019, announcing that it has as many users as TikTok – which has 26.5 million monthly active users in 2019, according to a report of Reuters – position themselves as the main competitor of the Chinese-owned short-form video service, which has more than 100 million monthly active users in the US as of August 2020, and 689 million active users worldwide as of July 2020, according to numbers included in TikTok ‘s lawsuit against the U.S. government that was filed last year.
Triller’s claims have helped bolster its potential for potential investors, but the various numbers he has reported to rights holders highlight the gap between him and his larger rival. (Last September, a few weeks after TikTok’s user numbers became known, Triller said The edge that it has 100 million daily active users and more than 27 million daily users.) Lu says the company is focused on growing ‘off-network’ content, which values the use of values such as monthly and daily active users.
“We are an open ecosystem, not a walled garden app like TikTok or other social networks,” Lu continues. ‘The value of Triller is to make money, not MAU or DAU. In the past, the press found it difficult to understand. Therefore, last year we chose to stop sharing MAU or DAU data and do not intend to do so in the future. It has no bearing on our value or our merits. Unique to Triller, our model encourages users to communicate with our content ‘off-network’, which by definition means that we push MAU and DAU away, ‘says Lu. ‘We value Triller for its ability to make money from our users, and we believe we do it better than any of our competitors. We are proud to be the only app that has ever reached number 1 in the app store in more than 50 countries simultaneously. ”
While preparing to become a public company, Triller hired heavyweights in the music industry, including the former chief financial officer of Warner Chappell Paul Kahn in January to the same position, following the lease of Tuhin Roy – formerly Universal Music Group’s senior new digital enterprise and innovation – as Triller’s president of business and Proxima Media’s chief operating officer in November last year.
If Triller becomes a public company, he must report his financial statements, including key performance metrics that usually include monthly active users to social networks, to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2018, the SEC paid the online marketing firm Endurance International Group Holdings Inc $ 8 million for the boom in subscriber numbers, and two of the company’s top executives paid more than $ 1.5 million for ‘retrenchment, interest and penalties’ for similar to pay charges without admitting guilt.
Although TikTok has maintained its growth despite heavy scrutiny by the Trump administration, Triller has been repeatedly accused over the past year of inflating his user numbers, denying all claims.
Six former employees told Business Insider that the 13 million monthly active users that Triller alleged had in October 2019 when Proxima Media acquired the company were inaccurate and ranged between 1 million and 2.5 million monthly active users, which Lu called ‘inaccurate information’.
Last August, Triller threatened to sue intelligence firm Apptopia for telling TechCrunch that Triller has been downloaded 52 million times, a few weeks after Triller issued a press release claiming to have reached 250 million global downloads in Android and iOS. Apptopia returned some of the claims after the lawsuit was threatened, but its rival intelligence firm Sensor Tower told the publication that Triller had been downloaded 45.6 million times by that time, confirming Apptopia’s original report. “No information company was provided for our information,” Lu told TechCrunch at the time. “Any numbers they provide are not relevant or accurate to our numbers.”
The video service is currently in a dispute with Universal Music Group, after the music label pulled its catalog off the platform, saying Triller was withholding payments and refusing to negotiate a new license agreement. A spokesman for Triller replied that he did not withhold any payments and that the company ‘does not need an agreement with UMG to continue working as it has been since the artists concerned are already shareholders or partners of Triller, and thus their authorization can give use directly. ”