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TikTok, Therefore I Am!?
If you're attending university, college, or even high school, you've probably heard of the app called TikTok. If not, here’s a quick crash course from our student union team: TikTok is a social media app that allows you to create short (15-30 second) videos, enhance them with filters and various effects, and then share them with others.
Much like Instagram’s home feed, these videos can be liked, tagged with hashtags, and appear in a newsfeed-style format. Join our student union team!
How Does TikTok Work?
In the app, you can choose from a vast database of short music or audio clips, to which you can lip-sync as if you were doing karaoke. The cooler the video, the more complex the choreography and the more creatively it’s made. There are always trending tracks, and using these can increase your video’s success. You can duet with other users, create response videos to ones you like, or participate in hashtag challenges.
Sound Familiar?
You’re not mistaken. Until August 2018, Musical.ly was the video app with over 100 million users, where we could share 15-second lip-sync videos with the public. It was a favorite playground for teens, producing stars with significant market value. However, in the summer of 2018, TikTok's owner acquired the app, and its 100 million users and their content were automatically transferred to TikTok.
This acquisition likely contributed to TikTok’s incredible growth in downloads: from 130 million in 2017 (pre-acquisition) to 660 million in 2018, a modest 407% increase. In October 2018, it became the most downloaded app in the USA, and by 2019, it boasted over 1 billion downloads. With around 500 million monthly active users, TikTok is now the world’s second most popular app.
New Platform – New Stars
It didn’t take long for aspiring influencers to conquer TikTok. Generally, TikTok influencers are also active on other platforms (e.g., YouTube and Instagram) and already have a loyal following. As of September 2019, the world’s most popular TikTokker is 17-year-old Loren Gray, with 34.7 million followers on the app. Among Hungarian “stars,” you might have heard of Czura Karina, who was named the best Hungarian video creator at the first TikTok festival, the TikTop Awards & Fest, in 2019. The 15-year-old Hungarian girl has 240,000 followers, and her most viewed video, which went viral internationally, has been seen by 8 million people worldwide.
Should Facebook Be Worried?
Between 2014 and 2018, the number of teenage Facebook users dropped by about 20%, suggesting that younger generations are engaging with different platforms. Although slow to react, in October 2018, Facebook launched its own lip-syncing video app called Lasso, intended as a competitor to TikTok. They perfectly copied every feature, offering nothing more than the Chinese giant.
Currently, it doesn’t seem like a real threat, but considering that TikTok strives for “authenticity” compared to the overly idealized Instagram and Facebook, Facebook will need to work hard to capture Generation Z.
