Since one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms TikTok is a huge unknown to many, we decided to investigate for you the interesting facts that pertain to this Chinese-based “project”. Below are some facts to know before joining this popular social media that has more than 800 million active users (7th most popular social media in the world) and 740 million downloads from app stores in 2019 (second most downloaded app in the world).
TikTok Isn’t an American Product
Unlike almost all popular social networks that have arrived from US territory, TikTok has a different story. Namely, TikTok originated at the other end of the world - China. The project called Duoyin was launched by the big Chinese technology company ByteDance in 2016 and in China, TikTok is still called Duoyin. Although originally experiencing success in China, it didn’t take it long to expand to other countries in the world.
Given that this is a Chinese application, a breakthrough in the US market was very interesting. Despite attempts to halt growth and breakthroughs in the US market, TikTok’s popularity hasn’t eroded. As a matter of fact, it’s estimated that the number of TikTok users in the US will increase from 37.2million in 2019 to 45.4 million in 2020. This isn’t hard to believe, as a Betway survey found that it took TikTok only 22 months to hit 500m users, Facebook (News - Alert) comparatively took over 6 years.
It will be interesting to see how the development and expansion of this social network will continue in the future not only in America but also in Europe.
Ownership of the Most Valuable Startup in the World
As we said in the previous paragraph, TikTok is owned by ByteDance. There are many interesting facts associated with this company, one of them being that it’s actually a startup. It’s still privately owned - which means that the development of ByteDance is going in a very good direction as it obviously doesn’t have some significant problems with their cash inflows and operations.
An interesting fact that we associate with ByteDance is that it’s the most valuable startup project in the world. Its value is estimated at more than $ 75 billion - which sounds really incredible. Thanks to the business model of startups, ByteDance still doesn’t have to worry about sales, that is, it shouldn’t be afraid that it will fall into the hands of some large US corporation. The market says competition is healthy, so it’s great to see a Chinese social network that defies the laws of doing business in the West.
Focus on Generation Z
Every social network has many young users in its beginnings. The reason is that young users are much easier to adapt to the new social network and faster to understand how the new social network works. Almost unbelievable sounds the fact that 70 % of TikTok social network users are between 16 and 24 years old.
After the youngsters fled Facebook and Instagram where their parents appeared, they seem to have found a “safe haven” at TikTok. Many new users won’t like the design and operation of the app at first and will consider this to be a platform aimed exclusively at young people. But we also thought that about Instagram but many people use it in their everyday lives. Regardless of TikTok’s focus on Generation Z at this stage, the fact is that over time, the number of older users is likely to grow - which will open up a whole new direction for content creation on TikTok.
Facebook’s Unsuccessful Attempt to Compete With Tiktok
Popular social networks have noticed a significant increase in the popularity of TikTok, so they decided to take some measures to prevent it from gaining control of the market. Certainly, Facebook, as the most important player in the field of social networks, has started a direct fight with TikTok. Facebook engineers thus created the social network named Lasso, which, with its functionality and capabilities, needed to compete directly with TikTok. Still, even though Lasso has gained some initial momentum on Facebook’s wings - the project hasn’t exactly been successful.
So, Facebook experienced a sort of “defeat” in the field of social networks focused on short video material. According to statistics, Lasso has managed to reach less than 1% of TikTok’s downloads on app stores - which can definitely be called a failure. Still, Facebook shouldn’t worry too much right now, as TikTok isn’t a direct competitor of Facebook. TikTok is youth-focused and offers only video content, while Facebook has grown over the years into a platform that offers plenty of opportunities. This is why Facebook remains undoubtedly the most popular social media in the world.
