AppLovin, an adtech company best known for mobile-app advertising, quietly launched a new social media app called Gist this month after losing its bid to buy TikTok, with the referral-code-gated app described as a “handbook for the curious” and featuring photo carousels, videos, and mini-games similar to Lemon8 and RedNote. Users select content categories like travel, relationships, or career advice, with the quiet launch serving as a strategy to build a user base and stockpile content before a wider release, and AppLovin currently hiring a specialist to recruit U.S. creators. The move follows AppLovin's failed April 2025 bid to buy TikTok outside China (it lost to a consortium including Oracle, MGX, and Silver Lake) and a prior investment in failed TikTok competitor Flip, with the company potentially hoping Gist boosts its growing e-commerce ads business, as social apps tend to attract e-commerce marketers.
