Hello, TikTokers!
Douyin was launched by ByteDance in Beijing, China in September 2016, originally under the name A.me, before rebranding to Douyin (抖音) in December 2016. ByteDance planned on Douyin expanding overseas. The founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, stated that "China is home to only one-fifth of Internet users globally. If we don’t expand on a global scale, we are bound to lose to peers eyeing the four-fifths. So, going global is a must." Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day.
The app was launched as TikTok in the international market in September 2017. On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked first among application downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries.
Musical.ly merger
On 9 November 2017, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, spent up to U.S. $1 billion to purchase musical.ly, a startup headquartered in Shanghai with an overseas office in Santa Monica, California, U.S. Musical.ly was a social media video platform that allowed users to create short lip-sync and comedy videos, initially released in August 2014.
Expansion in other markets
As of 2018, TikTok was available in more than 150 markets, and in 75 languages. TikTok was downloaded more than 104 million times on Apple's App store during the full first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower.
After merging with musical.ly in August, downloads increased and TikTok became the most downloaded app in the U.S. in October 2018, which musical.ly had done once before.
Since 2014, the only apps with more than 3 billion downloads are WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, and all of these apps belong to Facebook. TikTok is also the first non-Facebook app to be downloaded more than 3 billion times.
Features and trends
The TikTok mobile app allows users to create short videos, which often feature music in the background and can be sped up, slowed down, or edited with a filter.[80] They can also add their own sound on top of the background music. To create a music video with the app, users can choose background music from a wide variety of music genres, edit with a filter and record a 15-second video with speed adjustments before uploading it to share with others on TikTok or other social platforms.
The "For You" page on TikTok is a feed of videos that are recommended to users based on their activity on the app. Content is generated by TikTok's artificial intelligence (AI) depending on the content a user liked, interacted with, or searched. Users can also choose to add to favorites or select "not interested" on videos for their page.
Viral trends
A variety of trends have risen within TikTok, including memes, lip-synced songs, and comedy videos. Duets, a feature that allows users to add their own video to an existing video with the original content's audio, have sparked many of these trends.
Trends are shown on TikTok's explore page or the page with the search logo. The page enlists the trending hashtags and challenges among the app. Some include #posechallenge, #filterswitch, #dontjudgemechallenge, #homedecor, #hitormiss, #bottlecapchallenge and more. In June 2019, the company introduced the hashtag #EduTok which received 37 billion views. Following this development, the company initiated partnerships with edtech startups to create educational content on the platform.
Influencer marketing
Another TikTok usage that corresponds with engagement and bonds people in society is the use of "challenges." These could be on any related topic such as dances or cooking certain meals. People see other people doing something that is trending and then it continues to spread until it is a viral trend which connects people from all over.
The platform is growing exponentially, with up to 10 billion videos TikTok tends to appeal to younger users, as 41% of its users are between the ages of 16 and 24. Among these TikTok users, 90% say they use the app daily.[120] TikTok's geographical use has shown that 43% of new users are from India.[121] As of July 2020, there were over 90 million monthly active users in the United States alone.