Move Over Facebook. We are in the TikTok Age Now

TikTok has over 700M active users globally, rivalling the likes of Facebook & Instagram. We discuss the rise of TikTok and what it means for the world.

The Rise of TikTok

Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come – Victor Hugo

What is a great business, but an organized form of a killer idea? We surround ourselves with conventional wisdom and knowledge which tells us how to think, behave, act, and succeed. Every so often, an idea comes along that makes convention to kneel. The rise of the internet was one such idea. Amazon was another. Google, Facebook, Tesla, and others are all great ideas that worked because their time had come.

So when we say TikTok’s time has come, it really has.

To call TikTok a social media platform would be a disservice, although it is technically one. In a way, TikTok has taken the fundamental parts of a social media experience and created a system where users are only shown content that is most likely to resonate with them. Through AI and machine learning, TikTok is able to curate content accurately according to the viewing habits of the user.

There aren’t many current social media platforms that can boast of having content curation ability as accurate and engaging as TikTok. It’s easy to use platform makes content dissemination easier for creators.

Before delving more into TikTok, it is wise to first consider its history as a company.

TikTok – A Brief History in Time

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TikTok is not another Silicon Valley startup. It is an app owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance. Recent reports have stated that ByteDance is worth $75B, making it one of the most valuable private tech firms in the world.

The Chinese version of the TikTok app, Douyin, is also hugely popular in China. ByteDance was founded in 2012, and its meteoric rise has stunned many in the tech and marketing business.

Besides TikTok and Douyin, ByteDance has a number of other apps within its company such as Toutiao and TopBuzz. Since its inception, ByteDance has tried to have an international audience unlike other prime Chinese companies like Alibaba.