Unless the Supreme Court stops it, TikTok will be banned in the United States on Jan. 19. What does that mean for this website?

2024 was a strange year for InReview. In many ways, it felt like one of transition. Because of many factors, we published the least amount of content here in years, which resulted in a dip in traffic. However, we’ve also had great success on TikTok, where our content has reached over 100,000 people this year.

While we’re still working on increasing our subscriber count on our TikTok, @inreviewmovies, it’s been a place where we’ve been able to reach a new audience and where we’ve been able to have our content go viral regularly. This is because of the site’s unique algorithm that will keep showing you certain content if you watch it — in many ways, it makes subscribing unnecessary because of how targeted it is. Since we created our account in the summer of 2022, our videos have been watched over 400,000 times, despite only having a little more than 200 subscribers.

If TikTok is banned, it will be bittersweet for this website. We’ll have to change and adapt. We’re looking into alternate short-form video platforms, like YouTube shorts and Instagram video. We’ll likely migrate there, until TikTok returns — which I predict is likely, given how ingrained it is into people’s social media diets.

The ban might be halted, in which case we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing for the past two years: Provide video reviews, day-of reactions and short-form takes on anything to do with the entertainment industry. But no matter what, I would like to continue producing that content.

When InReview launched in 2018, it was purely a written entertainment blog, one of countless others. This is a very competitive industry, so we fought for years for any of our content to be noticed on Google, while building a modest following. At some point, this site became less about who read it and more about us enjoying the process of writing and honing our analysis and commentary.

Everyone who writes for this site either works full-time elsewhere, or has other primary duties. I work at my local newspaper as an editor, and this has been a fulfilling hobby, one that I take periodic breaks from.

When I started, I wanted to review anything and everything. Now, I only write about things that I find notable, be it an exceptionally well-crafted show or movie, or one that’s so bad it’s worthy of a thorough investigation on what went wrong.

In 2024, a blog that wants to be relevant can’t just be a blog; it has to have some form of social media presence and, if you want to break through, you should diversify your content. Since 2022, we’ve been doing that through TikTok.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and I have no intentions to stop. It’s been the primary place where I can hone my skills as a writer, while offering free guidance to others. Since I graduated from college in 2018, this has been the the main outlet where I’ve developed my distinct written voice, which has won me regional awards for my newspaper column, including Best Commentary at the 2021 New England Newspaper & Press Association’s Better Newspaper Competition. In a way, the oversaturation of this market worked to my benefit, as it served as a means for me to gain my proverbial sea legs with relatively no one looking.

Will this website go on forever? That I can’t guarantee. I still enjoy writing here, but I’m also approaching 30 and my interests are evolving as I am. I will also warn that more breaks are ahead, but I am committed to writing at least five or six posts a month myself. I’ve fallen into a habit that’s hard to break.

If you are interested in writing for InReview, send me a message through our “Contact” form. I work every day with professional writers, but I do enjoy helping those that might not find their voice and gain the confidence they need to reach their full potential.

Thank you for six years of readership. If you haven’t, please subscribe to this website and our TikTok. If you’re able to, please consider making a donation — it’ll help us bolster this site and everything related to it.

Best wishes and happy holidays.

Until my next post,

Mitchell Chapman
InReview Executive Editor and Owner