A quirky Snapchat hybrid from 2016 is present among other social media, causing a frenzy in Zuckerberg's "headquarters".
The reason for TikTok, the Chinese social network "phenomenon" that in 2019 managed to hit a record number of users reaching 250 million per day.
It is known that the China In terms of technology, it is light years ahead, creating high-speed technology giants, which, however, are evolving mainly within the country's geographical borders.
Since 2017, China's ByteDance has managed to overturn data and create a medium that now counts 500 million registered users, not only in China and Asia, but in Europe and America.
What is TikTok & the impressive numbers that follow it
So this is one application which through the videos that the user uploads to the platform, aims to entertain as many "viewers" as possible.
The start was made in 2016 with Douyin, for the Chinese market, while for the rest of the world, TikTok was launched in 2017, by the Chinese ByteDance. The application allows its users to create videos with music and synchronization, which are communicated to users who are connected to the "libraries" of the application. In 2018 the app gained popularity and became the application with the most downloads in the US in October 2018, while from the same year it is available in more than 150 markets and 75 different languages.
Douyin was originally developed for users in China in 200 days, while in its first year the application managed to gather 100 million users, with more than a billion videos being viewed on a daily basis. In fact, studies have shown that in just one year the short duration is fun video in China increased by about 95 million.
In September 2017, TikTok appeared, exactly the same application as Douyin, which, however, was launched in the international market, managing until January 2018 to occupy the first place among the free applications with the most downloads in Thailand. and other countries besides China.
In November 2017, ByteDance spent $ 1 billion to acquire the popular social media platform Musical.ly, based in Santa Monica, California, which aimed primarily at teens in the United States, looking forward to using it. create a larger community with existing accounts and existing data, integrated into an application called TikTok.
It is worth noting that TikTok in the United States alone has about 80 million downloads, while in the rest of the world (except China) it exceeds 800 million, according to data released by Sensor Tower, a San Francisco-based application analysis platform. on CNBC.
In fact, it is impressive that in the first half of 2018 TikTok was the application with the most downloads in the App Store, with an estimated 104 million downloads worldwide, far exceeding the downloads recorded on popular social media such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Youtube, while at the end of the same year it surpassed six million users in the US, occupying the fourth place among the free applications on AppleStore leaving behind popular apps such as Netflix, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger.
On the other hand, globally, the app since July 2018 counts 500 million active users per month - a number larger than Twitter users worldwide and about half of those on Instagram.
TikTok's success has boosted the profits of ByteDance, which owns a number of other social media and information apps, with an estimated profit of $ 75 billion, making it one of the most valuable start-ups in the world.
How it works
In its application, TikTok is very easy and fun, which is why it may have been embraced by the public so much. There are no ads, no news, no personal views, no photos.
The only condition for participating in the app is to create short videos with music, which most often appear with synchronized lips with the song, some choreography or even a small sketch, while in order for the videos to be more attractive and impressive, The application provides specific editing tools and filters for visual effects.
In addition, users have access to a music "library", through which they choose which song will "dress" their video. One of the most distinctive points of the application and its strong trump card compared to the social media applications of the West such as Snapchat, Facebook or Instagram. None of the three aforementioned platforms allow its users to add music to their videos, giving TikTok a significant advantage over its competitors in the video segment.
For more interaction between users, the "viewer" can react by liking, commenting or putting on an emoticon, depending on the impression made on him, while it is not uncommon for thematic challenges to be created, so that they offer inspiration and give ideas to users that may not be so inventive on a daily basis.
Both TikTok and Douyin have been able to maintain efficiency in their users, with the former still growing and the latter having already achieved tremendous growth, with daily users rising to the top.
The profile of its users
The basic ones users TikTok is for young people - teens or early 20s - while geographically 4/5 are in China (via the Douyin app) and the remaining 1/5 are scattered around the world. The daily use of TikTok by users aged 14-22 exceeds one and a half hours a day, a rather frightening statistic, which proves the growing involvement of younger people in social media.
What TikTok has found, however, is that its users have less and less time each day to engage with other social media apps and channels.
The downside of TikTok
Despite the excitement of the application to its users and the profits it has brought to the company from around the world, it is not uncommon for the parent company to face the negative side of the widespread use of its application, both from the side. users' parents, as well as governments in some of the countries where it is available.
More specifically, the biggest challenge that ByteDance had to face was that of the US Federal Trade Commission, which found that the app was illegally collecting private information from its minor users (names, emails and geographic location). Although most of the violations were actually committed by Musical.ly with the merger of the two companies, the responsibility was transferred to ByteDance, which was asked to pay a fine of $ 5,7 million - the highest fine ever recorded. for the illegal collection of personal information of minors in the United States.
In India - one of the largest markets for TikTok users with 27% downloads for 2018 to be recorded here - the release of the application on Google Play and AppStore was banned for a month, as one of the issues that this application had to face in the country was the predominance of users who published pornographic or generally "dangerous" content. . Given the popularity of the application in India's youth, the country's government had to take action.
However, none of the "obstacles" encountered by TikTok on its way were enough to stop or reduce its rapid spread in the world, considering that in 2019 it hit a record user record reaching 250 million per day.