TikTok remains tiptop in 2020, boosted by its latest upgrades
Since its release in 2018, short video app TikTok has gone on to become a smash hit the world over. We take a look at the latest upgrades to this app that in 2019 continue to gain popularity and predict where it’s headed for this year.
According to a report by American survey firm Sensor Tower, in a list of global smartphone apps ranked by downloads within the third quarter of 2019, TikTok came a lofty second, just after messenger app WhatsApp. TikTok did reign number one in Apple’s App Store though, and, according to a November announcement by TikTok’s operating company ByteDance, its overall global downloads have reached up to 1.5 billion.
The evolution of China-only version Douyin
Such amazing momentum has been a characteristic shared with TikTok’s original version, the Chinese edition “Douyin”. According to ByteDance, Douyin’s number of daily active users (DAU) as of July 2019 was 320 million. It seems that in China as the global counterpart TikTok, shares the same basic functions. However, Douyin is effectively ‘isolated’ from the global edition as an app especially for Mainland Chinese users.)
First of all, Douyin has a number of added new features. One of these is a group chat function, where users who follow each other can now message each other through text rather than just video. At first, it seems trivial, but being able to now use the app as a method of text-based communication is set to raise Douyin’s addictiveness even more.
Next is the setting up of an online creator’s academy. As its name suggests, these are lessons for users where experts explain in videos about how to increase followers and gain skills for selling products, among other things. In August 2019, ByteDance announced its “Creator Growth Plan”, where they’ve declared to boost their support for creators in order to reach a goal of raising the income of 10 million Chinese creators within a year.
Existing functions are also being improved. A noticeable area is in e-commerce. Previously, product pages only had links to other e-commerce platforms through which users could pay, such as Alibaba’s Taobao. Now users can complete payments within Douyin.
With the reinforcement of e-commerce has also come the expansion of Douyin’s search function. “Products” has been added to the list of existing categories that include User and Topical. For instance, when searching for “cosmetics” and selecting the Products category, related goods will appear with their prices and shop names.
Within the Wo (or “me”) section, which is equivalent to the “My Page” section of TikTok, a special page for managing shopping called Shopping Assistant has been set up that shows users’ viewing history and recommended products. Product categories clearly anticipate female users — they’re limited to Following, Recommendations, Apparel, Cosmetics, and Food.
120 tons of pomegranates sold within 20 minutes
While Douyin is all about short videos, it also comes equipped with live streaming functions. However, not everyone is able to use them. Users have to fulfill fixed conditions and the criteria are high: they must have over 50,000 followers and all their postings have to have at least 100 likes. Nevertheless, for powerful influencers, these are reasonable grounds for earning income.
Along with the spread of live streaming has come the rise of live commerce. In the summer of 2019, a slightly shabbily-dressed man with the account name “The Pomegranate Brother of Lijiang” managed to sell 120 tons of pomegranates on TikTok within 20 minutes. This came to a value of 6 million yuan (US$865,000). While it was surprising that he possessed such volumes of the fruit, he consequently rose to fame and currently has over 6 million followers.
With a great many users being female, live commerce on TikTok has lent itself well to beauty-related products. In anticipation of a December 12th sales event in China, an event the day before was held on Douyin that made use of live commerce. Even before a minute had passed during the event, participating actress Yikun Zhao gained over 10,000 viewers, and ultimately her orders exceeded 50,000. This resulted in sales of over 1 million yuan (approx. USD144,160), and over 6,000 face masks were said to have been sold.
A hashtag challenge causes continuous stock depletions
2019 was the year companies began carrying out full-scale marketing campaigns on TikTok.
According to a report by GLOSSY, US brand Too Faced, a subsidiary of Estée Lauder, rolled out large-scale advertising on TikTok in June, but this wasn’t just any old advertising campaign. As to why we need to look no further than how the company managed to continually sell out its flagship product “Lip Injection Extreme”: it was being purchased by teenagers in order to participate in a TikTok hashtag challenge. This challenge involved posting “before” and “after” photos in order to prove that the product worked.
Having witnessed firsthand the power of this type of ad campaign, Too Faced decided to collaborate with TikTok on a paid campaign. This was a hashtag challenge for marketing their new product “Damn Girl! Mascara”, and it raked up a total of 895 million views. By revitalizing marketing campaigns by companies on their platform, TikTok succeeded in launching a worthwhile means of monetization.
Common to both Douyin and TikTok is their stance on fostering self-publishing creators, similar to YouTubers. Indeed, promotions such as hashtags challenges tend to need active creators at the start to take off, and it’s also essential to increase the number of these distinguished TikTokers for users to not tire of the platform.
The necessary next step is likely to train the companies running the promotions. In order to involve a greater number of users, they need original ideas — users won’t try challenges if they’re not interesting enough. In another way, it can be said that a dearth of unique ideas prevents many companies from trying out promotions. However, TikTok is currently a crucial tool in winning over Generation Z and Millenials, and this will stay the case throughout 2020. Companies’ inventiveness will increasingly become an important element.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Team Roboteer
