What Is Tiktok?: With Over One Billion Installs, Tiktok Is Becoming A Very Valuable App

What Is TikTok?
With over one billion installs, TikTok is becoming a very

valuable app
Social media use has exploded. Since it's humble beginnings this part of the tech
world has grown leaps and bounds. It first started out as a way to help family and
friends connect, regardless of where they were located. Since then, businesses
tapped into the potential to reach new and existing consumers.
There's no doubt that Facebook is, by far, the most popular social media site in
the world. The company boasts about 2.5 billion active users who log into the site
every day. The company also owns two other popular social media sites—photo-
sharing site Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp. While Facebook
continues to dominate the social media marketplace, other names continue to
pop up to try to eat away at its market share and take the top spot. One of the
newest players available is TikTok. Read on to find out more about the company
and what makes it so popular.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 TikTok allows users to watch, create, and share 15-second videos shot on
cellphones.
 The app was launched in 2016 by startup ByteDance in China.
 Available in more than 150 different markets, TikTok has offices in Beijing,
Los Angeles, Moscow, Mumbai, Seoul, and Tokyo.
 The app hit one billion downloads as of February 2019, with two million
downloads alone as of January 2020.
What Is TikTok?
TikTok is a popular social media app that allows users to watch, create, and
share 15-second videos shot on cellphones. With its personalized feeds of quirky
and creative short videos, the app is characterized by its addictive quality and
high levels of engagement. Besides adding effects like filters, background music,
and stickers to their videos, users can also collaborate on content even if they're
in different locations and create split-screen duet videos.
The name TikTok is onomatopoeia for the sound of a ticking clock and

represents the short format of the videos. Launched in 2016
by startup ByteDance in China, where it's known as Douyin, TikTok absorbed a
similar Chinese video app called musical.ly in August 2018. ByteDance
purchased the lip sync-app for an estimated $1 billion the previous year.
ByteDance was reportedly valued at $75 billion as of 2018, making it the most
valuable startup in the world. It owns several other apps and raised $3 billion
from investors, including SoftBank Group, KKR, K3 Ventures, TCV, and General
Atlantic, according to Crunchbase.
ByteDance was reportedly valued at $75 billion as of 2018.

The company's popularity is helping it branch off globally. TikTok has offices in
Beijing, Berlin, Jakarta, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Mumbai, Sao Paulo,
Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.1
User Base
TikTok is one of the world's most popular social media apps and is available in
more than 150 different markets and in 75 languages. The app hit close to two
billion downloads as of March 2020, with 104.7 million downloads alone as of
January 2020, according to market analyst Sensor Tower.
Here's a breakdown of some of the app's most notable statistics:
 Popular with young people, China is one of the countries with the most
downloads. In fact, 400 million people are actively using TikTok in the
country.
 A quarter of the app's downloads come from India, with more than 200
million active users.
 Usage in Thailand is increasing, with one in seven people downloading the
app.
 About 96 million downloads are from the U.S.
Business
Like many other social media sites, TikTok makes money from in-app purchases.
Users can buy coins priced from 99 cents to $99.99 and use them to tip their
favorite creators on the platform. The company grossed $80 million from in-app
purchases globally, according to an April 2019 report from Sensor Tower. In Q1
2019, user spending reaching an estimated $18.9 million globally—222% more
than the app grossed during the same period last year.
TikTok also began testing ads on the app. The company allows marketers to
connect with users and consumers in more than 20 different markets including
North America, India, Russia, and Japan.
A social media trend that has helped the app gain attention worldwide is viral
meme challenges. The company has also pursued an aggressive marketing
strategy that involves getting popular celebrities to use the app and advertising
on competing platforms like Instagram and Snapchat (SNAP). Facebook
launched a TikTok clone called Lasso in 2018.
Controversy and Bans

Despite its popularity, the app isn't immune to controversy. The Intercept
reported that a Brazilian user livestreamed his suicide on TikTok in 2019.
According to the report, the video was left up for more than an hour before the
company noticed and removed it. But officials at TikTok waited a few hours after
removing the video from its site before contacting authorities.
In the first three months of 2019, an estimated 88.6 million people downloaded
the app in India, according to Sensor Tower. This was 8.2 times more installs
than during the same period last year. But in April 2019, the app was taken off
the Apple App Store and Google Play in India after a state court asked the
federal government to ban it because it is used to distribute inappropriate and
pornographic material and could make young users vulnerable to sexual
predators.
TikTok is banned in neighboring Bangladesh. It was also briefly banned in

Indonesia for "pornography, inappropriate content, and blasphemy." The ban was
overturned a week later after the company promised to take all objectionable
content off the platform and set up a local office to monitor and sanitize content,
according to Reuters.
In February 2019, the company paid $5.7 million in the U.S. to settle
allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children. It is the
largest civil penalty ever obtained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a
children’s privacy case.
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What Is TikTok?

With over one billion installs, TikTok is becoming a very

The name TikTok is onomatopoeia for the sound of a ticking clock and

ByteDance was reportedly valued at $75 billion as of 2018.

Here's a breakdown of some of the app's most notable statistics:

Controversy and Bans

TikTok is banned in neighboring Bangladesh. It was also briefly banned in

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