TikTok's Rise to Popularity
The rising social media platform, TikTok, has made quite an impression on worldwide users. The platform currently has boasted 800 million active users across the world with over 2 billion downloads from the App Store or Google Play. Everyone has increasingly become obsessed with the App through its abilities to allow users to create, watch, and share 15-30 second videos that can be filmed directly through their cellphones. Thus, with such a rapid boast, how did this platform become so popular? Read below for a discussion on the brief history of TikTok and what features it has to offer that increased so many impressions of the App.
The Evolution of TikTok
With TikTok’s sudden upsurge in popularity, many are actually unaware of when the social media platform was first developed. The App was launched in September 2016 by a Chinese company known as ByteDance. Originally, it was named Douyin, which began its marketing as a social network that serviced in video-sharing, and featured to be similar to other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Along with Douyin, ByteDance launched a similar social media platform in November 2017 that was called Musical.ly, which this began the 15 second lip-sync videos that users created on the App. However, this platform did not last too long; thus, once it was closed down, the company incorporated its features into Douyin. Then, in August 2018, the global version of Douyin was released, which the name evolved as TikTok and becoming the social media platform we all love and know.
Since then, there was a rise in popularity within all age groups, and this popularity increased the worth of the company, ByteDance, and their app, TikTok. According to the blog, What Is TikTok?, by Deborah D’Souza, it is reported that ByteDance is worth up to $140 billion and TikTok is worth up to $50 billion by mid-2020. Thus, you can say ByteDance is doing well even after their possible failure in their other App, Musical.ly.
Although, how did the social media platform rise up? What made it all possible? Read more on the features that ByteDance developed in its rise of popularity.
What Made It Possible
The social media platform, TikTok, brings content and community in the world. These two aspects brought forth many features that everyone adores about the App. However, what are the features that brings this? Provided below is some of the countless features that TikTok offers and caused the rise of its popularity.
For You Page: the top most popular feature that everyone talks about is its ability to have a “for you page”. This feature provides an elaborate algorithm that analyzes and figures out the tastes and preferences of users based on their engagement within the App. Therefore, not everyone’s “for you page” is the same and all are customized to every individual’s interest, making it a unique feature of the App that stands out with the other social media platforms.
Likes, Comments, and Shares: even though this feature is prominent in many social media platforms, it still adds a great way to engage within the videos. Besides liking and sharing the videos with others, its comment system stands out due to its ability to pin the highest engaged comments and being able to view other follower’s comments.
Extensive Music Library: this feature has not only increased TikTok’s popularity, but it has also increased the popularity of music artist’s songs. I do not know about you, but I know there are certain songs I only recently discovered due to TikTok, and those songs may have already been out for years! TikTok created the ability to grab licensed music from popular music labels such as Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music, which is another unique feature from the App.
Re-Watch: the social media platform does not only allow you to like, comment, and share, but it also allows users to re-watch their liked videos over and over again! Thus, with its variety of content, you won’t be able to forget it!
Video Editor: TikTok only keeps increasing it the features it provides when creating the videos. Not only does it allow extensive audios to choose from, but it also has other editing options such as a variety of filters, stickers, and text options. With this, nobody can get bored of the enormous amounts of content being created everyday!
Hashtag Discovery: this feature allows the user to expand with their “for you page” by searching up all the trends on TikTok through hashtags. It also allows creators to draw attention to their videos by categorizing it towards individuals of similar interests. Therefore, making it an easy way to build community within the content!
References
https://www.big3.sg/blog/a-brief-history-of-tiktok-and-its-rise-to-popularity
https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-tiktok-4588933
https://webrazzi.com/2020/05/20/markalarin-dikkatine-20-istatistik-ile-tiktok/
https://www.cavsconnect.com/ae/2019/08/15/a-short-video-revolution-musical-ly-versus-tiktok/#
https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-privacy-teens-under-16