Move over, Instagram. Get out of the way, Facebook. TikTok, owned by China-based company ByteDance, is growing at warp speed. Think Vine on steroids. TikTok is an app for making and sharing short videos.
TikTok works differently than other social media apps. It is creator-friendly.
“Video creators have all sorts of tools at their disposal: filters as on Snapchat (and later, everyone else); the ability to search for sounds to score your video. Users are also strongly encouraged to engage with other users, through ‘response’ videos or by means of ‘duets’ — users can duplicate videos and add themselves alongside,” The New York Times reported.
Hashtags are also an important tool on TikTok, as TikTok users can track “challenges,” or jokes, or repeating formats, or other activity.
Here are the 10 things you should know about TikTok.
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TikTok is known as Douyin in China, where its parent company is based. One of the reasons Douyin took off in China is that Instagram is banned there.
So why has TikTok exploded in the U.S.? It’s nothing like any of the social media platforms that were homegrown in America.
“Under the hood, TikTok is a fundamentally different app than American users have used before. It may look and feel like its friend-feed-centric peers, and you can follow and be followed; of course, there are hugely popular ‘stars,’ many cultivated by the company itself. There’s messaging. Users can and do use it like any other social app. But the various aesthetic and functional similarities to Vine or Snapchat or Instagram belie a core difference: TikTok is more machine than man. In this way, it’s from the future — or at least a future. And it has some messages for us,” The New York Times reported.
Its parent company, ByteDance, recently valued at more than $75 billion, bills itself first as an artificial intelligence company, not a creator of mission-driven social platforms. TikTok was merged with Musical.ly, a social network initially built around lip-syncing and dancing and adopted by very young people. It still carries a lot of Musical.ly’s DNA, and its app store reviews contain more than a little yearning for Musical.ly’s return. It was the defunct Musical.ly against which the Federal Trade Commission recently levied its largest-ever penalty for mishandling the private data of young users.
It took Will Smith years to join Instagram but it didn’t take him years to hop on TikTok which has only existed in the U.S. since the summer of 2018. The rapper/actor recently joining the social media platform. “In his first post, the multi-hyphenate appears on a young man’s phone, only to be plucked from the screen and dropped into the room with him. Smith ends the clip by saying, “I guess I’m on TikTok now. That was weird, y’all.” (Was it weird, though, Will? Really? You love social media. This isn’t that surprising.) No word yet on whether any future TikToks will feature 25-year-old Will Smith,” Wired reported.
Will Smith isn’t the only Black celeb to be a TikTok user. Cardi B is on and recently posted a video of her lip-synching to her own song. Comedian/actress Liza Koshy does funny videos on the platform. You can also find singer Jason Derulo, actress Keke Palmer, actor Sterling K. Brown, Lizzo, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, Terry Crews, and The Rock. Fenty Beauty even has a TikTok account.
TikTok reportedly has 500 million users, which already more than Twitter, which has 262 million International users plus 68 million monthly active Twitter users in the US. “In June 2018, Instagram had reached one billion monthly active users, up from 800 million in September 2017. The app is one of the most popular social networks worldwide, Statista reported.
In 2018, TikTok became one of the most downloaded mobile apps for Apple and Android devices in the US and Europe, surpassing the likes of YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. “TikTok has already been downloaded more than 80 million times in the U.S., logging 4 million downloads from the App Store in October alone. It is also one of the most popular apps on Google Play,” Yahoo! Finance reported.
Creator videos can be no longer than 15 seconds and they are based on various themes: music, cooking, travel, dance, fashion, etc. Users have access to simple tools to add music and special effects. It was launched in 2016 and by 2017, it had become China’s most popular mobile video app. Also that same year, the platform’s parent company acquired a competing video sharing site called Musical.ly for $1 billion. Musical.ly was also founded in China, yet most of its users were based in the U.S.
Its parent company ByteDance “is considered the most valuable private companies in the world, worth an estimated $75 billion,” Business Insider reported.
Not only is TikTok attracting mega users, but it’s also raking in the money. According to Bytedance recently completed a new round of funding led by major tech investor SoftBank, TikTok was valued at $75 billion, making it the world’s most valuable startup, higher even than Uber.
“Challenges are one of the key elements of TikTok. These are video skits that get acted out on masse, with people creating various responses to a popular meme. A recent one involved gummy bears singing an Adele song, which got 1.7m likes on TikTok, went viral on Twitter and spawned numerous spinoffs,” The Conversation reported.
TikTok recently announced it is opening a studio for creators in L.A. Parent company ByteDance recently opened an office in Los Angeles.
“Building up US operations may be a sign that TikTok might be looking to take on social media giants Instagram and YouTube,” Business Insider reported. The company, which has more than 400 employees, is also rumored to be searching for a US-based CEO.
The content creation studio this summer in Los Angeles.
