TikTok says its services are restored after the outage

TikTok has announced that it has successfully restored its services following a series of outages that affected user experiences last week. The platform, which has recently transitioned to new ownership in the United States, caters to over 220 million users across the country. The company attributed the disruptions to a severe snowstorm that impacted an Oracle-operated data center crucial for its operations. In a statement shared on X, TikTok explained, "We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather that took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle. The storm resulted in a power outage, leading to network and storage issues at the facility and affecting tens of thousands of servers that support TikTok in the U.S. This disruption impacted several core features of TikTok, including content posting, discovery, and the real-time display of likes and view counts." The timing of these outages coincided with the finalization of a deal in January that created a new entity for TikTok, wherein a U.S.-based investor consortium, TikTok USDS, acquired a controlling 80% stake, leaving 20% ownership with ByteDance. Following this transition, users reported various glitches, such as difficulties in posting content, searching within the app, and experiencing slower load times. As the service interruptions persisted, creators found that their posts were occasionally displaying zero views until the issues were resolved. During this tumultuous period, other social networks capitalized on TikTok's challenges. For instance, Skylight, a short video app backed by Mark Cuban and built on the AT protocol, saw its user base surge to over 380,000 in the week following the ownership change. Additionally, Upscrolled, developed by Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist Issam Hijazi, climbed to the second position in the U.S. social media app rankings, garnering 41,000 downloads shortly after the TikTok ownership deal was announced, according to analyst firm AppFigures.