Why It is popular tiktok

Every few years, a new app redefines the way we use social media. In 2022, TikTok the video-

sharing social media platform is the current most popular app in the world.

The kids love it. Adults don’t understand it. But there’s no denying its popularity.

Like it or not, there is a great migration that happens with social media as new platforms

capture the zeitgeist of culture. They offer newer and more unique ways to interact.

The mass adoption of new social media platforms flows through continuous cycles. From

Myspace in 2005, moving to Facebook in 2008, and then to Instagram (with a brief interlude by

Snapchat) in about 2014. The move to a new social platform is always reluctant, but eventually,

the popularity of the platform coerces us all to join.

In 2022, the mobile app TikTok is the current ruler.

What is TikTok? A mix of music, lip sync videos, comedy, and micro- blog content, TikTok is not

an easy platform to understand at first glance. It has even led to the growth of the competitor

platform Triller, which aims to take some of the attention away from the app.

TikTok is still undiscovered territory for anyone over the age of 25. Extremely popular with Gen

Z , TikTok is a glimpse into what it means to be growing up in today’s hyper- connected world.

The vast majority of users on Facebook today at aged 40 plus , while Instagram is more

popular with users aged 20- 40.

Who Invented TikTok?

In 2014, a social media app named Musical.ly ( pronounced Musical-ly) became incredibly

popular with the 13-18 year old demographic. The main purpose of Musical.ly was user-

generated videos that combined popular songs with videos from the users ( often called

Musers). The most popular use of the app was to create videos where they were lip-syncing

and dancing. By mid-2017, the Musical.ly app had over 200 Million users.

In 2016, Chinese app developer ByteDance created an app named Douyin, a rival to Musical.ly.

Launched initially only in China, the app was renamed and rebranded to TikTok for better

international appeal. Within a year, the TikTok app had more than 100 million users, and the

popularity of lip sync videos continued to rise.

In late 2017, Musical.ly was acquired by ByteDance for a fee of $800 Million. In 2018,

Bytedance consolidated the user accounts of Musical.ly and TikTok, merging the two apps into

one under the name TikTok.

With this unified brand and user base, the app began to increase in popularity very quickly.

TikTok became the most downloaded app on the Apple App store in early 2018, surpassing

Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube. As of July 2019, TikTok has over 500million total installs on

the Google Play Store.

Who Uses TikTok?

TikTok is named Douyin in China, and currently has a user base of over 250 Million users. In the

rest of the world, the app is called TikTok and is available in 154 countries worldwide.

Currently, 40% of TikTok users are located outside China. India has a particularly large user

base and accounts for approximately 25% of app downloads to date. As of March 2019, the

user base of TikTok in the US was approximately 14 Million.

The 2019 Internet Trends Report revealed that China internet users spent more than 600 million

hours per day watching short videos. As of 2022, TikTok usage continues to grow and the

TikTok app is a dominant force in the social media world.