PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — The popular social media app TikTok is now back up after being offline for roughly twelve hours.
Tampa Bay business owners said they are glad to see it back online.
Mark James is one of those business owners. He has a unique talent.
“Oh, this is everything…when you think about the fact that you can take wood that came from a tree, typically a fallen tree that would be destined for the incinerator or the landfill, and you can turn it into something that can make music. I mean, that’s pretty amazing,” said James.
It’s a passion he’s turned into a job.
“For the last five or six years, we’ve been building guitars,” he said.
Like many small business owners, he put his craft on TikTok.
“We jumped on it and started doing some videos, and eight months or so into it, maybe a little less, we had one of our videos go viral, and it hit like 1.2 million views, and the rest is kind of history,” said James.
James isn’t a social media expert but he said he must be doing something right.
“The first video that went viral, there’s no way in a million years I would have thought that would have went, but it did. So I don’t know what people like,” he said.
That video of James sanding a guitar, posted back in June of 2021, put his business, Bear Creek Custom Timber, on the map.
“I’ve actually had people say that have come in here and have said, ‘Yeah, I saw you on TikTok,’ so that tells me it’s working,” said James.
He said TikTok brings in roughly a third of his business, so when he saw it go offline late Saturday night, he was disappointed.
“The absence of TikTok would be felt by us, there’s no doubt…so social media is our only platform of getting the word out to people,” said James.
The app was shut down in the United States for about twelve hours before coming back online on Sunday.
TikTok is attributing its return to efforts made by President-elect Donald Trump.
TikTok’s account, TikTok Policy, made a post on X saying, “We will work with President Trump on a long-term solution that keeps TikTok in the United States.”
Trump said once he is sworn in, he will issue an executive order to delay the supreme court order that would ban TikTok in the U.S.
James said no matter what happens with the app, he plans to continue doing what he loves most.
“Yeah, we will feel it, and it won’t be the greatest thing for us, but we will survive,” he said.
“I just really want people to know how much she meant to us”
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