What is TikTok?
TikTok is a social media site that allows people to create a free profile online. This site enables you to share videos on any topic. It varies from 15 seconds to 10-minute videos. This is a platform to share funny videos or talk about more important matters you want to spread awareness about. These videos consist of music and dialogue. What started as an app to share dances and funny music style videos has grown to an open platform for all different beliefs and styles. TikTok is filled with those who dance, families documenting their life and other people trying to educate others on various topics.
Some people have a private account which they use to keep in contact with their friends close to home and worldwide. Others keep their accounts public, meaning anyone can see and engage with them. This app has been great for those smaller businesses trying to gain exposure. TikTok enables companies to share awareness of their business and encourages customers to have a more personal engagement with them one-on-one. I see Tiktok as a personality site; it is an app that lets you really know the person behind the creator and genuinely catch a glimpse of their life and personality.
When was TikTok created, and why?
Douyin was launched in September 2016 by ByteDance, a Chinese technology company. Then in late 2017, they decided to change the name to TikTok and join with Musical.ly.
Musical.ly was a music app released in Shanghai in 2014. On this app, you would make short lip-sinking videos. The reason behind the name TikTok was the idea of the second hand on a clock ticking.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This idea was used because it represents the ideal of short few-second videos, which was the app’s purpose. Once TikTok and Musical.ly merged, ByteDance wanted to focus on the best way to combine the apps and create a unique platform.
The main idea behind the app was to have a platform that enabled people to produce fun short videos consisting of dancing and lip sinking. However, anyone who has seen the app today knows this ideal has evolved. There are now videos that are 10 minutes long rather than the short 15-second videos that the app started with. There is now a lot more talking and opinions on the app; it is no longer solely based on dancing and music, although it is still a massive part of it.
Key moments in the history of TikTok
August 2014 – Musical.ly was created. On this app, you could make short lip-syncing videos to popular well known songs.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
September 2016 – ByteDance releases an app called Douyin. Douyin was a popular site with over 100 million users within a year. The success of Douyin made ByteDance want to explore this market and take advantage of the unique idea for short videos.
November 2017 – ByteDance decides to buy Musical.ly for $1 billion Us dollars. They chose to purchase musical.ly with the idea that they could combine their site called TikTok with the short lip-syncing videos that Musical.ly were producing.
August 2018 – Musical.ly and TikTok offically merged and became one app called TikTok. To help this merge, they completely shut down Musical.ly and shifted all existing users’ profiles on Musical.ly straight onto TikTok. By doing so, this meant TikTok already had a large following from the get-go.
February 2019 – TikTok hit over 1 Billion users worldwide. This was a significant achievement. It highlighted that the idea of merging the sites was a good one as the success kept growing.
June 2020 – TikTok took a huge hit when India banned TikTok. This was a significant setback, as many TikTok users were, in fact, from India.
July 2020 – The option to make money by posting on TikTok has become more accessible. Not only could you accept brand deals and publicise products on the app, but you could also now receive creator funds from TikTok itself. This means the more comments, likes, shares and views your videos got, the more money you would produce. To start with, the creators fund only had $200 million for all those creators; however, this funding increased to $1 billion in the Us and doubled that worldwide.
November 2020 – Charli D’Amelio became the first account on TikTok to reach 100 million followers. This was huge! Even TikToks’ own account didn’t have that many people. This proved that the site was expanding, and these creators were doing well. Once she proved it was doable, more creators wanted to compete and reach that number of followers.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
2022 – Tiktok is ever-expanding with a huge following. What started with an outstanding achievement of someone having 100 million followers is now a wide range of people who have managed to do precisely that. It is common to have 100 thousand followers, and many have gone into the millions.
Conclusion
With so many new features, it is no surprise that TikToks publicity has just kept growing and doesn’t show any sign of stopping any time soon. It is now a multi-purpose app for all ages and all creative ideas. Whether it is dancing, singing, sharing advice, giving your opinion or simply sharing your life, this site is for you! ByteDance has taken advantage of this unique market and produced an app that has thrived over the past six years, being one of the quickest sites to succeed so quickly.
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If you would like to know some more about other Social Media sites, please check out some of the following blogs:
