We’ve all heard of, downloaded, watched videos from, or seen something about the social media app and website TikTok in the past year. It has been an internet sensation, which was majorly added to by the boredom and online presence that many people had in 2020 from the pandemic related shutdowns, and continued into 2021 with ongoing restricted life and activities. TikTok became even more popular when people realized you could make money from it, similarly to how some can make money on Instagram or YouTube. But how popular is this platform? And is TikTok more popular than Facebook and other social media sites? Let’s get into it.
If you didn’t know much about this platform already, TikTok is an app and website available platform that allows creators to have an account where they can customize their profile picture and bio, add links to other social medias, link their own products or websites, and create videos. The main feature is video creation and watching, with some people on TikTok getting millions of views per video. You can utilize songs, random audios, create or upload your own sounds, and more for videos that can be 15 seconds, one minute, or three minutes in duration.
Creators can also interact with each other and others via private messages, commenting on videos, likes, and can even duet or split videos to create their own content with other creators’ videos within it. Interaction can also be outside of the app as you can link Instagram and other social media pages, save videos if creators have it allowed for their content, add a video to your favorites, follow a creator to see more of their videos, and more. The possibilities are quite large.
As with any other social media option, TikTok also has its own algorithm that helps creators be found either by others, the “for you page” which is the main page where videos show up, or by brands and other big creators. The algorithm also works to show individuals more of the same videos they spend time on or like, so if you like a video with a certain topic that topic shows up more often for you in the future.
So it’s no big surprise that the internet took this platform by storm, especially when many of us turned to the internet for distractions and entertainment since the world was quite scary and shut down in early 2020 into 2021. Quick, easy, and varied entertainment meant that millions could spend a lot of time on the app without realizing, and get a lot of different types of videos as well. It was similarly attractive in the way YouTube has been, but more so than YouTube for most people because of the shortened length that helps keep attention spans.
All of us watching this platform grow were curious where it would land and how long it would last in the minds of the world as well as in popularity. But by December of 2021 it was officially announced by Forbes that TikTok did in fact gain global popularity and surpassed platforms like Google search and Facebook, which are still quite largely used options and truly put into perspective the reach of this brand.
We don’t know for sure what will come in the future for TikTok and its users, as there have been disputes regarding privacy of information on the app as well as who should run it and what money should be distributed to creators. Plenty of people out there like it, and that has been made clear by its surpassing of Facebook and other social media sites. What’s next for TikTok? You can make guesses and share thoughts with your friends and family now that you have some more information from us today about TikTok.