- What is TikTok?
- Who is the owner of TikTok?
- And How it become very popular?
Let’s know the history of TikTok to answer all these questions.
TikTok is a fun, entertaining social platform that has become especially popular in the last year. The app allows users to create and share short, (up to 60 seconds) videos on any topic. people watching these videos and if they like, they follow you. This application was created in September 2016 in china and today it has more than 500 million users worldwide.
Who made TikTok and how came this idea?
There were two very good friends in China whose friendship had been going on for a long time, one of Alex zhu and the other was loyal and. they wanted to create an app that will become very popular around the world and will get money according to their hard work. Also, the first goal was to give the ability for people to get an education by short videos without a degree and university fees.
As we know they spent 6 months making this app and finally they launched this app.
But what finally happen? people start to use this application just for entertainment, not for education, it was the opposite of them. People did not understandability and value of free education, they just watching videos so they made a new decision and make it as an entertainment app. After this, they spent more money and time on the app because they launched it again.
How TikTok’s popularity has grown
Since the release of the program, the TikTok app has gained a lot of popularity, which is growing remarkably fast. In October 2018, worldwide, it was the most downloaded photo and video app from the Apple Store. The app is known to have more than 500 million monthly active users. According to statistics, the US is the most popular country, where it has been downloaded 80 million times.
Let us now consider some of the main reasons for the growing popularity of the TikTok app:
The app is used by many celebrities, such as Jimmy Fallon, who has contributed to the app’s popularity. The app started collaborating and paid money to many celebrities in different regions to raise the app’s awareness in the local audience.
Jimmy Fallon was initially interested in the app, and later Tick Tok signed a contract with it for paid ads. In November 2018, Jimmy Fallon launched “Challenges” on his show and used TikTok as a challenge platform. He called on his viewers to post a video post on TikTok titled #TumbleweedChallenge. In the video, they had to perform rotations on the floor. For the said campaign to spread quickly the TV presenter himself took the first challenge.
The challenge spread like a virus, reaching more than 8,000 records and 10.4 million entries in one week. The Tik Tok app also has partnerships with celebrities in the regions. Celebrities not only post content on TikTok but also promote TikTok on other famous social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, etc.
As we know TikTok supports 40 languages that make this app more popular:
Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Cambodian, Cebuano, Czech, Dutch, English, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Korean, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
Creating and sharing videos with the TikTok app is easy. To see it, you just need to open the application, after which different records are automatically activated one after the other. Users can record anything from their daily routine and post it on a social network. Due to the short format of the video does not require much time to prepare it.
Unlike other social networks, TikTok does not have a dedicated space for advertising, they do not even think to compete with other media platforms in this regard. However, due to its rapid growth in popularity, many brands are now realizing TikTok as a potential marketing channel. Several brands have used techniques such as TikTok Challenges and Contests to help users generate brand-related content. Brands also use hashtags to promote their products/services in TikTok marketing campaigns.
For example, consider a Guess brand campaign. On September 1, 2018, the brand Guess invited all users of TikTok created in the US to challenge their #InMyDenim hashtag. The contest prompted users to create a video where they could wear Guess_ clothes and use the appropriate hashtag.
Why has TikTok been banned in some countries?
As we see TikTok become very famous in a short time and it is no surprise that it had so many scandals. For example, The United States has fined the popular China-based Tiktok app $ 5.7 million for illegally obtaining personal information about children under the age of 13 without parental consent. As they said app used information about the location of children and other information and store it longer than necessary.
Also, President Trump has said that was considering banning TikTok, he wanted to punish china because of the coronavirus and finally, secretary of state Mike Pompeo told fox news that they banning TikTok due to national security concerns and fear of Chinese surveillance. TIKTOK is also banned In India because of the problem between India and China border.it is also banned in Bangladesh, Malaysia, etc.
Future of TikTok
Despite this problem, the current popularity of the TikTok app is awesome, but it still does not guarantee that it will ever reach the top, as other apps like Instagram and YouTube. To maintain its current popularity, TikTok will have to offer innovations and find new ways to keep users interested. They will also have to make the platform more marketing for brands so that they can place ads. For brands that want to expand into social media in the future, TikTok will allow them to do so. If it manages to capitalize on brand engagement, then TikTok consumption will increase even more and it will be able to compete with other social media platforms.