TikTok Shop has been courting Whatnot’s biggest live-auction sellers, according to Andrew Zucker at The Hollywood Reporter. TikTok reps met several times with Taylor Lally, who says his candy auctions will clear $1M this year, and he’s open to moving because Whatnot charges a flat 30 cents per transaction whether an item goes for $1 or $50. Whatnot is building a dedicated marketplace, having raised hundreds of millions in July at a $20B valuation and pushed past trading cards into categories like food and golf. TikTok is coming from the other side, adding auctions to an app with more than 100M users where the algorithm can hand a seller an audience he never built.
