Nowadays, individuals normally use their smartphones for a variety of daily tasks. Smartphone applications like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are widely utilized for learning, amusing oneself, and communicating, particularly for entertaining objectives.
As it can be assumed that most of the popular applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are established for amusing aims, even if the features of each application are diverse and distinctive.
In recent years, there are many applications growing up its popularity. Remarkably, one of the newcomer applications named “TikTok” has distinctive and interesting main feature which has caught numerous people’s attention, resulting in its exponential growth of consumption. Nowadays it has become a trending app with a significant user base.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a well-known social media software that enables users to create, view, and share 15-second video contents on their platforms. The app is renowned for its highly engaging users and addictive nature because to its tailored feeds of amusing short videos paired to music and sound effects and it lets the users creates their own content easily by just using mobile devices or webcams.
This application is a web-free space which certainly not limits range of content. The users can post their content as much as they want without paid access service. The users develop their contents on this platform for numerous purposes. Consequently, this web-free feature is one of the most crucial factors which influences individuals to use this platform.
Moreover, TikTok also has an actual-time content uploading characteristic in which everyone can share their personal content immediately.
For example, news agencies have started to use TikTok to publish their news, especially the highlight of the news. This application benefits people who want to follow real-time news such as the current conflicts or controversial issues. The new agencies have been posted every day, every week, and also every month as per they have the news. This indicates that a web-free space and a natural content upload feature are the reason why people create their content on TikTok.
History of TikTok
The Chinese business ByteDance introduced TikTok in 2016. Musical.ly’s 200 million subscribers were joined to TikTok after TikTok purchased the competitor app in 2017. It was a short-video program which was mostly used for lip-syncing videos at that time. The name was changed to TikTok after ByteDance purchased it in 2018, and since then, its popularity and user base have increased dramatically.
The app came to be very successful proved by more than 3 billion times downloads, according to the most recent statistics. Moreover, it boasts 1 billion active users monthly. This can conclude that it has approximately 133 million active users per month since it was originally launched in 2018. The platform’s popularity is obviously seen from the dramatic rise in users.
Furthermore, the site now offers more features than simply lip-syncing. According to their contents, platform creators have to be completely creative, producing both entertaining video and informative content. In TikTok, dancing and entertaining videos continue to be the most popular categories. Oppositely, there is also a ton of educational information available on the platforms like investment and health.
The platform itself also continues to improve its new features and capabilities. For instance, TikTok videos could originally be upload up to 15 seconds. But it has prolonged to 3 minutes and then has further extension of video uploading up to 10 minutes.
Especially the addition of the video length extension, TikTok has developed over time. It will soon be able to compete with the other websites that offer long-form videos like YouTube.
Why is TikTok so Popular?
TikTok has gained more and more popularity nowadays, especially since the outbreak. The COVID-19 lockdown implicitly played an important role in terms of making this application popular as people had to quarantine in their accommodation following the virus prevention policy. As most people have nothing to do except internet surfing, TikTok is one of the trendiest choices of the users.
This shot-video application begins playing one video at a time when the viewer becomes absorbed in a sea of entertaining with addictive video content. According to this addictive nature of this application, it is very fallacy to keep viewing random videos for hours.
There is a variety of challenge for the users to recreate and the flow of repeating content is generated, resulting in an increase in app downloads.
Furthermore, TikTok has a handful of powerful creators who gained wide recognition and fans after using this creative video platform. Millions of fans have been attracted to these creators, as well as increasing the platform’s attractiveness.
TikTok has a global appeal since it is available in more than 150 countries and provides its platform in excess of 75 languages. According to the statistic, the American use TikTok the most by almost 131 million users, followed by Indonesia (92 million), Brazil (74 million), Russia (55 million), and Mexico (46 million).
Overall, TikTok has become popular among users of all ages and backgrounds thanks to its distinctive blend of short-form videos, creative tools, and algorithm-driven content discovery.
Famous celebrities on TikTok
There are many celebrities who have made TikTok go viral, either by creating their own content or by participating in challenges and trends on the platform.
The app is liked and used by several celebrities, such as:
Jimmy Fallon have helped drive the app’s popularity. Jimmy Fallon interests in the app first from his personal needs but was later capitalized on by the app, through a paid partnership. In November 2018, Jimmy Fallon started a “challenge” section on his profile and used TikTok as a platform for the challenge as dealing in the contract.
Pop singer, Justin Bieber, who has 26 million fans, has also embraced TikTok and frequently shares music videos and behind-the-scenes content with his fans on this platform.
One of the greatest stars on TikTok is Addison Rae, who has more than 88 million followers. She is well recognized for her dancing videos and lip syncs, and also started a path a music career after her content goes viral.
Will Smith, with his 73 million fans, frequently posts funny and relevant videos on TikTok.
A model, Kendall Jenner, has over 4 million followers on TikTok, where she frequently posts behind-the-scenes looks of her personal life.
Another well-known TikTok celebrity, Charli D’Amelio, has more than 150 million fans. She is well-known for her dancing videos and is credited with developing a number of famous TikTok dances.
Key Features of TikTok
Short-form video format: TikTok is focus on attention of short-form videos has made it particularly appealing to younger generations like bite-sized material. According to the research, the first 5 seconds of the video play an important role in the catching attention from the viewers as that short period is the time when consumer will decide to continue watching the content or not.
Creative tools: TikTok contains a variety of tools for creativity which let users add music, filters, special effects, and template to their videos. This has made it more easily for anyone to produce fun and interesting material without having expensive tools or advanced editing abilities.
Algorithm: TikTok’s algorithm system shows the users a variety of contents relating to their interests, which has caught users’ attention and make them stay interested and spend more time on the app.
Viral challenges: TikTok is renowned for its viral challenges, in which users produce videos centered around a certain topic or fad. These contents frequently incorporate with well-known songs, dances, or memes, contributing to the app’s growing popularity.
Duet: Users may really sing together, dance together, and do other tricks since the two videos will play at the same time. This feature recreates content from another user existing content, called Duet video.
Stitch: Users may Stitch their videos together with those of other users by using this tool. In contrast with Duet, a stitched video will play after the original video. Users may remark, follow directions, respond to another creator’s video, and even answer questions in this mode.
Correspondingly, more-than-1000-follower accounts on TikTok have a live streaming option, allowing the creators and their followers to communicate with each other directly. Users may even give the presents to TikToker who is now broadcasting live content real-time.
Conclusion
All things considered, following these are the main reasons why TikTok become one of the most well-known and noticeable application these days.
First, application itself have a unique feature unlike the other existing applications. No one have done the application like this before in any market.
Second, the format of the app regulates the users to create a short video in a length of 15, 30, or 60 seconds which compressed all of the interested point in only short period. Doing so influences the users to share the short video from TikTok widely. In addition, the users can apply the filter and music (the supplementary features) which are provided on the app into the clip.
Lastly, TikTok company also sign a contract with famous celebrities as their implicit power to enlarge their reputation. And all of these factors are combined to be the main reason why TikTok becomes popular.
