How TikTok Broke the Social Media Monopoly of Facebook and Instagram
TikTok’s meteoric rise could signal an end for Facebook and Instagram
TikTok’s rise to the social media summit is nothing short of sensational, having been dominated by Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter for years. The short-form video app has become one of the most popular social platforms among Generation Z.
TikTok has changed the social media game ever since it started trending with 1.5 billion users worldwide, it is one of the fastest-growing social media applications. It originally started with the name Musical.ly but then was soon changed to TikTok after an acquisition by a Chinese tech giant ByteDance.
But after many unsuccessful social media apps have found such as Vine, MySpace and dare I say it Google plus has found. There isn’t much room at the top to play with the big boys. So how did TikTok carve open some space in the congested social media industry.
Time Waster/Easily Digested Content
There’s a simple reason why people are flocking to TikTok: it’s a superb time waster. The app is designed to play videos on loop until a user scrolls to the next video creating a platform which can burn time like no other.
Users can be half paying attention to the app and doesn’t require large amounts of focus. The app will reproduce familiar content and use their algorithm to match the users likes, dislikes and previous watch-time.
The addictive nature of the app can be summarized in 3 parts:
- Unpredicability/variety — every time you flick up to see a new video, you have no idea what it’s going to be.
- Brevity — the clips are very brief, and you can blow through hundreds in a quick session, only spending time on the ones that entertain/interest you.
- Ease — there’s nothing simpler than flicking up with your thumb. It becomes like sitting at a slot machine, hoping it’s going to “hit” something great.
Easily Created Content
Creating and editing videos is easy, with various effects, filters and stickers to choose from. By adding effects and filters, backgrounds, music and stickers to their videos, users can collaborate on content, whether they create a split-screen duet video or a full-length music video. On the contrary of Instagram, where users only post their own photos, TikTok allows everyone to re-use others’ content and remix it, creating an endless opportunity for creators and influencers to create memes, funny content, remixes of songs and even of videos.
Covid-19 Lockdown
Another major contributing factor to TikToks rise was the Covid-19 lockdown. The lockdown forced people to stay home and that means spending more time watching tv shows, TikTok videos and playing videogames. I have definitely been seeing an increase of video creators and families getting involved in making new TikTok videos. This has allowed TikTok to further increase their user age range and demographic which helps the company avail to a lot of new advertisers. Once assumed as a channel that’s just for kids, the TikTok user-base is diversifying fast with brands, influencers, YouTubers, parents, and even grandparents joining the fun.
With users forced to stay home, from merely passive viewers, became active users that started posting their first TikTok videos. Some users are doing that just for fun, but others are starting to realize that TikTok can actually become a way to get famous and even earn money thanks to live streaming sessions and influencer marketing sponsorships. The week before Boris Johnson announced the lockdown, 278,000 UK users downloaded TikTok on their phones.
“Surrealism is embedded into the DNA of the internet,” says Kenneth Goldsmith, author of Wasting Time on the Internet. He sees TikTok’s popularity as a natural reaction to the oppressive mania of a global lockdown — it is a pressure valve for people cooped up indoors. “The only response to an existential situation is absurdity and humour,” Goldsmith says. “It brings us back to the darker side of surrealism.”
TikTok Sub-Culture
The most important thing to understand about TikTok is that it is anarchic: it has no internal logic or guiding principle. Many TikTok videos are absurdist jokes. People surprise family members, impersonate celebrities or set up elaborate punchlines. The platform frequently has the surreal quality of a fever dream: videos riff on arcane internet ephemera or make nonsensical jokes. Creativity is paramount.
This is TikTok as pure subculture: in order to participate, you need to have swum through digital water since childhood, a graceful stroke through each platform — Facebook, Vine, Instagram — that is easy and assured. There is no need for gatekeepers: the price of admission to this subculture is simply understanding the joke. “It’s the meme culture of Gen Z. There’s so much background to memes. You need to have lived through them.”
This sub-culture creates a tight-knit community which is embedded within pre-teens and young adolescents which helped grow the platform from its infancy. This creates strong user-loyalty to the platform and is something that can no longer be found on such of Facebook and Instagram.
Comparison to other Social Media
On Instagram, we are primped and preening, on Twitter, loudmouthed and strident, but on TikTok, we can just be weird. Which makes it the perfect platform to ride out a pandemic that has nearly one-third of the world’s population trapped at home. “It’s therapeutic,” Goldsmith explains. “If we look at Freud’s theorising of the joke, the joke is always about showing humor in the face of death.
This exodus of Gen Z from Instagram to TikTok mirrors the way millennials dumped Facebook in the 2010s. “Apps are generational in a half-decade sense,” says Milner. “It makes perfect sense that Gen Z would have their own platform and it would be TikTok. If you look at Instagram and everyone on it is aged 25 and older, you want to find your own place.”
Conclusion
To conclude, is TikTok really going to end Facebook and Instagram’s social media presence? It is unlikely but it is definitely taking away time spent on their apps. TikToks model of interaction is unique and captivating, with new trends and different ways to engage consumers.
With the latest news about Trump planning to ban TikTok due to suspicion of the data collection of the Chinese government, it is difficult to say how popular this app really can be or if it will be just another flash in the pan like vine.
Research
https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2020/05/26/the-rise-tiktok-0
https://www.digitalimpressions.in/blog/the-rise-of-tiktok/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/26/how-coronavirus-helped-tiktok-find-its-voice
