TikTok’s Takeover: Going for Growth
We know, we know…not this again. These days, it’s hard to escape the conversation around TikTok. What started as an app marketed towards children, filled with dance videos and trending sounds, has evolved into a cultural cornerstone that has captured an entire generation while sending the adults around them into perpetual exhaustion. Most people over the age of 30 roll their eyes and shudder at any mention of the app, but their aversion to TikTok is much more than a “kids-these-days” rejection of some new fad. TikTok is taking over as the platform that defines our modern age, and dismissing the importance of this online community is as detrimental to older generations as our boomer parents never learning how to rotate a PDF.
To fully grasp just how powerful TikTok has become, we’re breaking it down one piece at a time, starting with the app’s exponential growth.
TikTok was named as the most downloaded app of 2020, strongly beating out competitors since Q1 of 2019. The app reached its first billion downloads in February 2019, just three years after being founded in 2016. Two short years later, TikTok now boasts over 1 billion active users. Let’s compare that to other social media moguls: it took Facebook almost nine years to reach one billion users, Instagram about 8 years, and YouTube and WhatsApp about 7 years to reach that level of engagement. Even Snapchat only has about 500 million monthly users, despite being founded five years earlier than TikTok.
One factor in TikTok’s exponential growth over the past five years was it’s merger with Musical.ly in 2017, which allowed the company to infiltrate the U.S. market, consolidating an already active and engaged user base.
While one could argue that people are simply spending more time online at present than they were when Facebook and its counterparts launched, there is something special in the way that TikTok operates that keeps users hooked on their “For You” page for a feature film’s length of time. The top-secret algorithm seems to know users better than they know themselves, tracking every millisecond of watch time to better serve curated content. While the pandemic certainly contributed to an uptick for the Tok, it is undeniable that the app was already headed towards massive success. It currently stands as the seventh biggest social media app worldwide.
However, the app’s success has not come without significant regulatory challenges. Pakistan was once the fifth highest in global downloads of the app before the country banned TikTok (the first time) in October 2020 due to “immoral” content on the app. The app has since been banned in Pakistan four separate times. TikTok eventually abandoned its Indian market after the Indian government banned the platform, and former president Donald Trump attempted to ban the app in the United States before a federal judge blocked the attempt. Not even these massive setbacks have been able to slow the company’s growth.
Another key indicator of TikTok’s growth is the way the platform has captivated web searches over time. In the past twelve months, “feta pasta tiktok” became a breakout Google search after a TikTok user’s recipe video went viral. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” jumped 374% in sales after TikTok user Nathan Apodaca (@420doggface208) posted a video of him lip-syncing the song while drinking cranberry juice and skateboarding to work.
The app has a clear impact on current cultural movements and trends and has disrupted a myriad of industries in a short amount of time. This is only the beginning for TikTok — and just the tip of the iceberg on our analysis.
Next up, we’ll dissect TikTok’s influence on the music industry. But while it’s top of mind, don’t forget to follow Kindred Media on TikTok.
