A few years ago, surely no one imagined that the world’s leading social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter would be dethroned by an unknown platform from the East called simply with the onomatopoeia TikTok.
While the marketing specialists of the developer brands rack their brains thinking up bombastic names to capture the attention of the general public, here they decided to simplify to the extreme the name they would finally give to the brand, because in fact, it is not a name but a sound that indirectly alludes to music or musical expression.
And they certainly succeeded, since they aimed at young people with a product of direct and simple interests, just as youth is characterized: simple and direct in its messages, but at the same time creative. Don’t miss this new case study that will resonate with your senses. Discover the TikTok case.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a digital platform of Chinese origin that allows sharing of short videos that can be edited in vertical format, whose contents range from dances, and humorous sketches to educational videos. The length varies from a few seconds to almost 10 minutes of pure audiovisual content. Once the recording is played, it starts over again, so it will be repeated over and over again, in a sort of infinite loop.
As of 2017, TikTok became a revolution in the world of social media. It has a presence in 155 countries, was translated into 75 languages, and obtained a market share of $75 billion, positioning itself as the most outstanding startup in recent years. In March 2020 alone, Tik Tok reached 115 million downloads, between Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, surpassing by far the giant’s Facebook and Instagram.
The average number of active users who regularly use TikTok is between 16 and 24 years old, followed by those between 25 and 40 years old, making up 41% and 27% of the total. The statistics also show that it is women who use TikTok most regularly, at 60%, compared to 40% of men.
Although in Latin America and Europe TikTok has achieved a very significant adhesion after 2020, the penetration rate is much higher in Asia, reaching almost 40%. Within the Americas, the United States is the country with the highest number of downloads per day.
In recent years, TikTok has incorporated some artificial intelligence functionalities and a wide variety of filters in the creation of content. It is no coincidence that the application is currently so popular among teenagers and young people because it offers fun, exposure, and innovation on a permanent basis.
The origin of Tik Tok
TikTok is known in China as Douyin and is a property of Chinese company ByteDance, launched in September 2016, initially under the name A.me, before being renamed Douyin later that year. The company planned to expand Douyin overseas. It was developed in just 200 days and within a year already had 100 million users and more than a billion video views every day.
In leaps and bounds, Douyin launched internationally as TikTok in 2017, and by the beginning of the following year, the platform was already ranked number one among free downloads in several Asian countries. Today, celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bieber, Jessica Alba, and Will Smith have since joined TikTok and share content daily with their millions of followers.
In November 2017, ByteDance acquired Shanghai-based startup musical.ly. Musical.ly used to be a social media video platform that allowed users to make short comedic videos. As it was a fairly well-known app among younger audiences, TikTok leveraged that audience to merge and create a broader multimedia community, with accounts and data in one app.
As of 2018, TikTok was expanding to more than 150 markets and 75 languages. It also gained millions of downloads in Apple’s app store during the first half of 2018. Following the merger with musical.ly, TikTok became the most downloaded app in the United States. If you want to buy tiktok followers, come and visit their page to find more info.
In 2019, media outlets named TikTok as the seventh most downloaded mobile app of the decade between 2010 and 2019. It was also the most downloaded in the Apple store, giving Apple fans the perfect complement to create and share their content from the camera of an iPhone. In 2020, TikTok also began providing cloud storage, based on a partnership with Oracle. Even Sony and Warner signed a licensing agreement with TikTok.