TikTok is the fastest-growing social platform amid slow overall social network user gains in the UK. Facebook remains the dominant force, but as its user base ages, its grip will begin to slip.

UK regulators prune Meta’s walled garden: Meta has been ordered to sell Giphy, and new ownership could bring back the GIF database’s popular ad program, without the antitrust concerns.

UK. Regulation Promises to Improve Consumer Trust in BNPL Services in the UK. In February 2021, the UK government announced that its Financial Conduct Authority would begin regulating the BNPL sector. New stipulations require BNPL providers to carry out affordability checks on customers and ensure the vulnerable are treated fairly.

Snap Inc. Thrive Analytics.

In a Q4 2020 survey by GlobalWebIndex, for instance, 22% of US and UK social livestreamers said having a “buy” button available during a livestream session would be a top purchase driver, compared with 13% of social network users who said the same for social media content overall.

The pandemic led to many upward revisions of our UK digital user forecasts. Some changes (podcast listeners) will be permanent, while others will be temporary (digital gamers). Our social network user numbers, meanwhile, didn’t change much at all.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch, vice president of content studio Paul Verna, and senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Sara M. Watson discuss how social media might (actually) be regulated, social commerce, the ceiling for Disney+, Snapchat rolling out TikTok competitor "Spotlight," Spotify testing Snapchat-like Stories, Facebook paying UK publishers for news in 2021, why you should never trust a raven, and more.

Snapchat will have 16.1 million monthly UK users, a 3.4% YoY increase. That’s actually slightly lower than our previous forecast, in which we expected Snapchat’s UK user base to rise by 3.8% to 16.2 million, due in part to TikTok’s strong growth. Snapchat’s UK user growth rate among 18- to 24-year-olds will be stronger than in the US, at 2.0%.