What the heck is Tik Tok?
I’m guessing if you are over 18 you are probably wondering what on earth Tik Tok is? Well its the new social media kid on the block.
Remember Vine? Well its sort of similar. It’s an app that allows you to share short videos, generally no longer than 15 seconds. The app features stickers, filters and augmented reality to add to your video clips.
So what’s the history of Tik Tok ?
It feels a bit weird talking about the history of something that is only a couple of years old, but here goes… TikTok, also known as ‘Douyin’ (Chinese: 抖音短视频 literally “vibrato short video”) in China. It was created by Zhang Yiming in September 2016.
TikTok’s parent company, China-based ByteDance, acquired an app called Musical.ly in 2017. It then incorporated it into TikTok, and discontinued the original Musical.ly app. The Musical.ly app had 65 million users in the USA.
It was the world’s fourth most downloaded app in 2018 beating both Instagram and Snapchat.
So what’s it famous for?
There are a few things that have ‘gone viral’ on Tick Tok. The biggest one is probably the choir of gummy bears singing the chorus of Adele’s Someone Like You.
There are also various challenges on Tik Tok such as people putting make-up on potatoes, lip-syncing to top pop tracks and shouting ‘hit or miss’ at people.
Tik Tok Demographics and stats
Tik Tok has some pretty impressive stats for a fairly new social media app.
- 500 million active users worldwide
- The app is available in 34 languages
- Most Downloaded app in Apple App Store Q1 2018
- 6th Most Downloaded App in the World Q1 2018
- Most Downloaded App in Google Play Nov 2018
- 41% Users Aged 16-24
- 29% Engagement Rate
- 1,000,000 Estimated Daily Page Views
So what About Advertising?
TikTok has no paid advertising yet, but some brands have been using it for influencer marketing campaigns or to publish their own brand videos.
The app is making money in other ways such as in-app purchasing. Users can purchase emoji and digital gifts to share with TikTok users during live streams.
It is probably worth getting on board now and getting to grips with the app and the demographics to see what potential there could be for your business.
What about my kids using Tik Tok?
The age for Tik Tok is 13+ but like many other social apps, many younger kids are drawn in.
National Online Safety, as usual, have a useful guide to Tik Tok for parents. The image below sums up the information nicely and is from this website.
Want to find out more about using Tik Tok?
You can contact us at Plumb.Digital for a chat about how we can help you investigate using Tik Tok for your business.
We will never over-sell and we will be straight with you about which options are best for you, your business and your customers.