TikTok is a revolution in the world of social media.
Being a mixture of Vine, Instagram and YouTube, the platform has more than 500 million users from 150 countries, about half of which are teenagers under 18 years of age. Many people still don’t know about this app, how it works and why such content became so popular.
Let’s shed some light on this topic.
Where did TikTok come from?
This is actually a Chinese app that was launched in 2017 by developer ByteDance for markets outside China. In three years it has gained 500 million users worldwide. It has become extremely popular, especially in Asia and the United States. Its community is growing daily.
Tik Tok initally had a strong competitor — Musical.ly. Before long, the creators of TikTok bought the project and merged the two platforms into one.
What does it do?
TikTok allows people to create clips of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds.
Users can choose background music from a wide variety of genres and video-effects like fast motion, slow motion or editing with a filter. Then they can upload it to share with the TikTok community or post it on other social platforms. Earning likes and followers, you become popular and rise to the top.
After you have registered, you will see a list of famous accounts in Tik Tok. On the recommended videos tab are those videos that have the highest number of likes — this is a great section to find out what is now in trend.
Unique features
TikTok has separated itself from other social media platforms with unique features.
For example, “duet” is a feature that allows users to film a video aside another video. A “react” feature allows users to film their reaction to a specific video. This reaction hovers over the screen in a small window.
Privacy if you want it
Users have the opportunity to make their accounts “private”: only people who have authorization in TikTok can view these pages.
Also, every user can decide who exactly can view their clips (“public”, “friends only”, or “private” regardless of whether the account is private or not) and “react” to their content (only their friends or any user).
What about advertising in TikTok?
The app offers advertisers 4 placement formats.
Hashtags
TikTok offers brands the opportunity to create their own hashtags and promote them among users, including through user-generated content and popular bloggers.
Vertical commercials
In the user’s content: full-screen video, which users can skip. Duration 9–15 seconds, to which you can add call-to-action buttons (download the application or go to the website).
Native brand integration
Tik Tok offers native brand integration in publications. In its current stage, its available only in the format of a static or animated image, but later TikTok will integrate a video format.
Branded filters
Also, branded filters in 2D, 3D and augmented reality are available in the app. TikTok offers the opportunity for branded filters to remain in the top 10 for ten days.
Create freely
Tik Tok is a platform that allows people to show their creativity. Everyone wants to declare themselves, surprise others, get recognition.
Thanks to its unique features, Tik Tok allows anyone to become an actor, a liner, to try different roles and show their talents. This distracts people from the usual routine, study, work. No other application provides users with such a field for creativity and expression.
This is the Tik Tok phenomenon — discovering what people lack and giving them the opportunity to do it freely while having fun.
