What is TikTok? Why Is It So Popular?

Every few years, a new app redefines the way we use social media. In 2021, TikTok the video-sharing social media platform is the current most popular app in the world.

Like it or not, there is a great migration that happens with social media as new platforms capture the zeitgeist of culture. They offer newer and more unique ways to interact.

The mass adoption of new social media platforms flows through continuous cycles. From Myspace in 2005, moving to Facebook in 2008, and then to Instagram (with a brief interlude by Snapchat) in about 2014. The move to a new social platform is always reluctant, but eventually, the popularity of the platform coerces us all to join.

What is TikTok? A mix of music, lip sync videos, comedy, and micro-blog content, TikTok is not an easy platform to understand at first glance. It has even led to the growth of the competitor platform Triller, which aims to take some of the attention away from the app.

TikTok is still undiscovered territory for anyone over the age of 25. Extremely popular with Gen Z , TikTok is a glimpse into what it means to be growing up in today’s hyper-connected world. The vast majority of users on Facebook today at aged 40 plus , while Instagram is more popular with users aged 20-40. In this article, we will look at the history of TikTok, who owns TikTok, and how users and advertisers are benefitting from the platform.

The TikTok app is the most popular social media app in 2021. It has been in the top app downloads since 2018.

TikTok Statistics to Know in 2021

• As of , TikTok has an estimated 1.1 Billion users worldwide
• As of , 60 percent of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24
• Almost 50% of
  Place for ADS
  TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34
• The TikTok app has been downloaded over 1.5 billion times worldwide.
• TikTok downloads in 2020 reached 850 million
• The TikTok app reach is worldwide : 466 million are from India, 173 million from China, and 123 million from the U.S.
• The average user spends 52 minutes per day on the TikTok app
• Bytedance the company that owns TikTok is valued at $140 Billion, making it the world’s most valuable startup and making the company worth more than Twitter and Coca Cola.
• TikTok reports that it has over 80 million monthly active users in the United States. 60% are female, 40% are male.

Who Invented TikTok?

In 2014, a social media app named (pronounced Musical-ly) became incredibly popular with the 13-18 year old demographic. The main purpose of was user-generated videos that combined popular songs with videos from the users (often called Musers). The most popular use of the app was to create videos where they were lip-syncing and dancing. By mid-2017, the app had over 200 Million users.

In 2016, Chinese app developer ByteDance created an app named Douyin, a rival to . Launched initially only in China, the app was renamed and rebranded to TikTok for better international appeal. Within a year, the TikTok app had more than 100 million users, and the popularity of lip sync videos continued to rise.

In late 2017, was acquired by ByteDance for a fee of $800 Million. In 2018, Bytedance consolidated the user accounts of and TikTok, merging the two apps into one under the name TikTok.

With this unified brand and user base, the app began to increase in popularity very quickly. TikTok became the most downloaded app on the Apple App store in early 2018, surpassing Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube. As of , TikTok has over 500million total installs on the Google Play Store.