TikTok Restores Service After Outages Caused by Snowstorm
TikTok, now under new ownership in the U.S., announced on Sunday that it has successfully restored service following outages last week that disrupted user experiences. With over 220 million users in the U.S., the social network faced challenges due to a snowstorm affecting an Oracle-operated data center responsible for TikTok operations.
The company explained that the winter weather conditions led to a power outage at a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle, impacting tens of thousands of servers essential for TikTok’s functionality. This resulted in issues with core features such as content posting, discovery, and the real-time display of video likes and view counts.
In January, the U.S. finalized a deal to establish a separate entity for TikTok, with an 80% stake held by a U.S.-based investor consortium named TikTok USDS and the remaining 20% ownership by ByteDance. The transition to new ownership coincided with the snowstorm, leading to user disruptions like glitches in posting, search functionality, slower load times, and timeouts. Creators also saw zero views on their posts during this period.
Despite efforts to resolve the issues, outages persisted, causing frustration among users trying to post content. This situation inadvertently benefited other social networks like Skylight and Upscrolled, which experienced a surge in user growth and app downloads following the TikTok ownership deal.
Skylight, a short video app backed by Mark Cuban and built on the AT protocol, saw its user base exceed 380,000 within a week of the deal’s finalization. Similarly, Upscrolled, created by technologist Issam Hijazi, rose to the second spot in the social media category on the App Store in the U.S., with 41,000 downloads shortly after the TikTok deal.
Techcrunch event
Boston, MA
|
June 23, 2026
