TikTok is now the most downloaded app in the Apple iTunes App Store as per the Q1 report by app store marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower. This means that the Chinese app managed to beat PUBG, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and many other apps you are undoubtedly familiar with. Is this a hit out of nowhere? What is TikTok even about?
What is this app for?
First released in 2016 and to the western world known as “TikTok,” also called Douyin (抖音短视频) in Chinese, the app is quickly gaining popularity around the world. TikTok, dubbed “a cool community of original music video makers” is a social network focused on music-centric videos. Once you download it, you can watch music clips, record short videos, edit them and add filters or other effects before you save and share your videos. In the first quarter of 2018, TikTok was download approximately 45.8 million times onto iOS devices.
The concept was similar to the rival app musical.ly until TikTok owner Bytemod (sometimes Bytedance) acquired musical.ly in November 2017 for $1b and integrated parts of this concept, user base as well as technology into how we know TikTok today. As of February 2018 TikTok recorded to have 66 million daily active users. In comparison, Twitter had 100 million daily active users in 2017.
What about Android?
It’s very likely that TikTok is also very popular on Android, but as there is no Google Play Store in China, it is difficult to assess the exact numbers of all Android users. It’s also worth noting that currently, the TikTok app in the Google Play Store is not compatible with all my Android devices, which usually points towards a regional restriction and in my case, that would mean that the TikTok app is currently not available to German Android users of the Google Play Store.
TikTok might become for dancing what Twitch is now for gaming. With this kind of growth curve, it’s only a matter of time until they can reach the next milestone. I am looking forward to hearing more from them in the future.
YouTube: How I make my TikTok videos (Tutorial by Riva Gabriela Quenery)
Photo credit: The feature image “Korean Dancers” was done by USAG Humphreys. Screenshots from the app are from TikTok / parent company. The example video about how TikTok can be used was done by Riva Gabriela Quenery and comes from her YouTube channel.
Source: All data sources have been linked directly on the respective text parts of the article.
Editorial notice: Update 13th of April 2020 – As the app name is now spelled differently we corrected the software title from “Tik Tok” to “TikTok” without a space.
