Who’s on TikTok? 800 million people that’s who! TikTok is a popular video sharing app that is used by everyone from celebrities to grandparents. TikTok’s main purpose is to provide entertainment to its users. Over time businesses began to get in on the popularity of the app and now it can also be considered as a marketing tool.

Before TikTok the app was originally called Musical.ly, a popular lip-syncing app very similar to TikTok. Musical.ly was acquired by a company called ByteDance in November of 2017 for around $1 billion. Musical.ly eventually became TikTok and all Musical.ly accounts were migrated to a TikTok one.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms to date. The app allows users to create and post 15 to 60 second videos for their followers. TikTok made it possible for people to go viral a lot quicker than ever before. With constant challenges being released and created, users have plenty of chances to gain exposure. Some of the most popular content on the app includes dances, comedy skits, and point of views or as it’s called on TikTok, POVs.

Some of the best ways to gain followers on the app include participating in challenges, using popular songs or sounds, and remaining active on the platform. Hashtags and video descriptions also play a vital role in allowing your content to be more easily discovered. Tiktok also has a live streaming feature. This allows content creators to better connect and interact with their audience.

As mentioned earlier, TikTok is becoming a marketing tool for companies. Businesses who target younger audiences have been using TikTok to their advantage. TikTok offers advertising where companies pay to have their video ad shown when scrolling through the for you page. Companies have also been using TikTok for influencer marketing. This means that a brand finds a TikToker that they think represents their brand well and can reach their target audience. The brand then reaches out to the creator and offers either free product or some form of pay in exchange for the creator to show the product in a TikTok video. That is just a brief explanation of how businesses can benefit from TikTok.

Let’s compare TikTok to another major social media platform, like Instagram. Instagram and TikTok share a lot of the same features, however, Instagram is primarily a photo sharing app while TikTok is a video-based app. When it comes to explaining the main differences between these two platforms unxplanet.org says it best. “Everything is related but probably the audience is the difference here, Instagram goes for GenY (Millennials), while TikTok goes for GenZ (baby boomers)”, overall TikTok tends to have a younger demographic which means the content found on the app appeals more to that age group.

When it comes to interface and how the apps are organized there is one notable difference. On TikTok there are two different sections to watch videos on. One of these is the for you page, a place to discover content from for the most part new users to you, and then there is the following section where only videos from people you follow show up. Instagram has the explore page which while it is similar to the for you page on TikTok, it is also different because it shows content from a lot of people you already follow at least from my experience.

The for you page is the ultimate way to get discovered on TikTok. Once your video reaches the for you page the engagement it gets determines how long it remains there and how many people can potentially see it. A Lot of users on TikTok who are known become known by having one specific TikTok make it to the for you page and blow up. An example of this would be Alex French. French got famous overnight for posting a compilation video of her saying “Hi” ...that’s it. Her video then went viral and quickly got her to a million followers. French now has over 3.9 million followers and remains active on the platform.

While TikTok is extremely entertaining, it does have some political controversy surrounding it. Officials believe that TikTok is a threat to national security as it is allegedly Chinese spy software. On Thursday August 6th, 2020 Trump signed an executive order that takes effect 45 days from that. The order essentially forbids any form of sales or exchange of money between ByteDance, the Beijing company that absorbed Music.ly and founded TikTok, and TikTok. What does this mean for TIkTok? Npr.org explains that that “...the order likely will mean the viral video service could no longer receive advertising from American companies and the app could be removed from Apple and Google’s app stores.” This is a brief rundown as to what is going on at this very moment with TikTok politically and can change at any time. As of now, it is unclear whether TikTok will be gone for good or not.

TikTok is an amazing platform that has so much potential. Whether companies use it as a marketing tool, or teenagers use it for entertainment, Where TikTok goes really depends on what happens legally with it over these next almost two months. Personally, I believe that if TikTok does get removed, a similar app will eventually follow and get just as popular. I think it's safe to say the wild success and popularity of TikTok changed the social media game.