In the chaotic week of the TikTok ban, from the app’s fate becoming clear to its shutdown and immediate revival, a number of other social apps saw a flurry of new activity. From new apps like Rednote and Lemon8 to old stalwarts like Instagram and YouTube, these platforms saw an influx of new users.
Whatnot, a social marketplace for livestream-based selling, was one such platform, having its three biggest days for new users successively between January 18 and 20, the three days immediately following the ban. Whatnot now has several million users and over $3 billion worth of merchandise on the marketplace. About $2 billion worth of goods sold on the platform last year. Whatnot has rapidly ascended to be one of the most popular live shopping apps in the U.S., dethroning QVC and jumping from 1% market share in 2020 to 35% by 2022. On average, its monthly active users increased 180% year-over-year in 2024.
“It has been a crazy few weeks,” said Armand Wilson, Whatnot’s vp of categories and expansion. “There’s been a huge influx of new folks. Our team didn’t do anything in particular to take advantage of the moment. It was very organic. We’re just focused on helping the new sellers integrate smoothly into the platform.”
Earlier this month, Whatnot raised $265 million in a Series E funding round, bringing its total funding up to nearly $750 million and its valuation to nearly $5 billion. On a given week, more than 175,000 hours worth of streams are broadcast on Whatnot, which the company said surpasses QVC’s weekly broadcast hours by 800 times.
Whatnot, which initially began its focus on collectible items like Funko Pops, has increasingly branched out into new categories. Most recently, women’s fashion and sneakers have become important categories, bringing Whatnot into the worlds of fashion resale and luxury. The company has a separate Instagram account, @whatnotfashion, to promote its fashion offerings. And last year, it partnered with ThriftCon, a vintage fashion convention, to bring more than 3,000 sellers’ vintage fashion collections onto the platform. Hyped fashion items, like the recently relaunched Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami collection, are common on the app.
Whatnot sellers are mostly collectors of rare, collectible or vintage items, and Whatnot makes money by taking an 8% commission from each sale. The top 500 sellers on Whatnot have all sold more than $1 million worth of products. The app centers on a scrolling feed of vertical video, similar to apps like TikTok or Instagram Reels, but with a focus on livestreams.
Sales through TikTok Shop have remained high throughout the last few weeks. On January 19, the day after the ban went into effect, sales on TikTok Shop totaled over $32 million. President Trump gave TikTok owner ByteDance a 75-day extension on the ban, but its fate once that period is up is unclear.
Wilson said Whatnot’s approach to new categories is to expand slowly, only introducing new ones like women’s fashion when the team is confident it has a handle on existing categories. Even with Whatnot’s 600 full-time employees, category expansion can be tough.
“Whatnot works because we have deep knowledge about the communities and categories we serve,” Wilson said. “That’s what separates us from the competition. Our team is relatively small for the size of the platform. People who sell handbags have different needs than people selling Pokémon cards.”
Livestream shopping has seen recently seen substantial growth. From 2023-2024, the percentage of Americans who shopped through livestreams increased from 7% to 13%. And part of Whatnot’s plans to capitalize on its growth is to expand internationally. Already in 2024, its U.K. sales grew 155% from January to September, and the number of livestreams broadcast in France grew an average of 73% quarter-over-quarter last year.
Wilson said the mood within the company is that this is the year livestream shopping will take off.
“Seeing it evolve over the last four or five years, it feels like this is the time,” he said. “The Gary Vees of the world are saying live shopping is what everyone will be talking about this time next year. It combines the best experiences of shopping online, including the convenience, with the best of shopping in-person: the community and the in-depth product showcases. You’ll hear us getting a lot louder over the next year.”