You are watching Trends!
Every Thursday we take a peek at the future to see what's ahead of us!
Welcome to ALUX.com!
The place where future billionaires come to get inspired.
Hello Aluxers and welcome back!
We all love making videos about our travels or other cherishable moments in our life,
and thanks to social media the task of making videos is becoming easier day by day.
Well as they say on social media,-” create don't hate”
and in today’s video, we are going to explore how the Chinese video making app TikTok created a global wave of 15 seconds of fame.
So let’s dive in.
If you're unsure what Tiktok is, don't worry we have got you covered.
TikTok is a video-based social media app that is owned by the Chinese tech startup Bytedance.
Bytedance is headed by CEO Zhang Yiming and presently valued at $75 billion, the startup is famous for many apps that promotes biteable content on the go.
Apart from TiTok, it also owns ‘Toutiao’, a news and information-based app which is currently the number one content aggregation and distribution app in the world.
Toutiao is famous for its machine learning techniques that help the app to deliver tailored feed to each of its users.
Now if you are wondering why we are talking so much about Toutiao, interestingly the machine learning techniques used by TouTiao have been also applied to TikTok,
so let’s try to know how TikTok was created.
In 2014, Bytedance launched an app called Musical.ly which was a social media platform to share lip sync videos,
this app gained major success and was transformed into ‘TikTok’ in September 2016.
While musically was only limited to lip-sync videos, TikTok gives users the freedom to make all sorts of videos in a time frame of 15 seconds using various filters,
popular music tracks and numerous visual effects.
The app also uses algorithms to prompt users about the videos made by friends and the popular videos in their region and internationally,
making TikTok both easy to use not only to make videos but also to consume them.
The app's mainly targeted user base is below 24 years of age and currently, has 500 million active users.
Right now, it's the 9th largest social media platform across the globe.
In China, TikTok is called Douyin and has 150 million active users making it the most popular social media platform in China amongst teenagers.
Within just a short period post-launch Tiktok has managed to achieve some massive success worldwide,
so let's try to know, what's the secret behind the rise and rise of this app.
As we mentioned before, one of the key features of TikTok is its machine learning technique,
TikTok’s algorithm works very differently than any other social media apps.
While the famous social media apps like Facebook and Instagram show users the content made by their friends on the app,
TikTok pinpoints at a range of diverse videos that are viral at that point in time and are customized based on every user's trend to consume content.
That means the more you use the app the better targeted will be the content you consume, and this exactly makes it more addictive to the GenZ.
Whenever a user opens TikTok it gives them a feeling of almost anything and everything could pop up
from lip sync videos to dance routines going viral and feeds you ideas to post videos of your own TikTok.
It has also introduced many challenges backed by celebrities to keep its content fresh and trending.
For example, the famous English singer Ed Sheeran started a TikTok challenge named #BeautifulPeople
which requested users to upload a video featuring his song beautiful people,
the challenge went viral racing to 335 million views along with 150,000 video uploads.
Now Aluxers regardless of whether you enjoy participating in social media challenges or not,
we are sure you love to stay online and connected, and that's why we recommend using a VPN.
It's a super easy to use piece of software that protects your data online so that the government or other companies can't spy on you
and you can enjoy the internet you know and love.
We partnered with the great folks at NordVPN to bring you an amazing offer.
If you go to alux.com/vpn and sign up using the code ALUX, you will get Get 70% off NordVPN!
Only $3.49/mo, plus you get an additional month FREE to see if you find it valuable.
Protect yourself today on the internet by going to alux.com/vpn.
Now, back to TikTok.
One could think the lack of Facebook in China it's what has benefited TikTok to gain popularity in the country within just two years,
but with its unique algorithm and marketing philosophy TikTok has gained success even at international level.
There are currently 20 Million active TikTok users in India, but 42% of the annual revenue of the app comes from the USA.
There are numerous teens worldwide who have capitalized on early entry to TikTok
and have created follower base of millions of people for their unique style of videos.
For example Wilking sisters is a popular TikTok handle of two sisters who keep their large follower base hooked with their inventive choreography
that merges their unique dancing styles with special effects offered by the app,
and there are more than 30 such TikTokers who have over 10 million followers glued to their TikTok feed.
So there is definitely no doubt that the app has changed the way we consume video content globally.
Although the app looks quite promising, it currently has no backing from the homegrown internet giants like Alibaba,
but it does have support of $3 billion from Softbank and American investment firm KKR.
Its 2019 revenue target is $17 billion, but with such massive targets to achieve,
let's try to understand how TikTok is planning to stay atop in video-based social media even in the future.
With a quick expansion and international user base, Tiktok has successfully tripled its revenue in the past year,
but currently, it is struggling to help its users to monetize their content.
Unlike YouTube, TikTok users don't get paid on the number of views they receive for their creations,
also, the short duration videos make it difficult to incorporate ads and monetize content made by users.
TikTok also doesn't help its users in brand collaborations so the users have to take efforts to monetize their videos even though they have a large follower base.
To overcome this hurdle TikTok has introduced a Livestream feature which helps its users to monetize their content,
and if the number of live streamers continues to rise, it can become a potential challenger to YouTube in the future.
And Aluxers, if you're curious to know the growth stories of other app-based startups like TikTok go watch our Trends video “Is Snapchat still relevant?,”
by clicking in the top right corner.
As Tiktok is targeted mainly at teenagers who are considered to be minors from a legal perspective,
the app has faced many lawsuits across the world for inappropriate content published by some of its users and the data privacy concerns raised by the app.
In February 2019, TikTok paid $5.7 million to settle allegations that it had illegally collected private data from minors under the age of 13,
interestingly it was the highest fines paid by an enterprise for child privacy.
TikTok also had to face a temporary ban in India this year since the government found that some of the videos were encouraging sexual predators and pornography,
the app then decided to remove 6 million videos made by Indian users which were against the community guidelines.
Until the ban was removed, the company was losing around $500,000 daily in revenues.
TikTok is definitely not the first social media app to run into legal scandals
but such repetitive backlashes can potentially threaten its growth and existence across different geographies.
Just like any other photo or video-based social media platform, TikTok is offering a great opportunity for its users to showcase their creativity and also monetize it,
but it is ultimately the responsibility of its users and their guardians to ensure that their data privacy and time is not put to risk in the race of going viral.
Because we have a large international audience and would love to know Aluxers:
Have you ever used it and found it addictive?
Do you think the app will continue to win over the youngsters worldwide?
Let us know in the comments.
And, of course for sticking with us until the end, here's that bonus you're waiting for:
Ever heard the term TiTok celebrity?
Well, many teenagers across the globe are highly active on TikTok and some of them have also become TikTok celebrities,
that is they have millions of followers on the app and have actually become famous with their 15 seconds of TikTok videos.
The most followed TikTok celebrity is a 17 year old American Loren Gray who has 34.7 million followers on the app
and has also received many nominations for teen choice awards.
Interestingly enough, Loren started making music videos on Musical.ly and recently has also released her first single “Can’t do it”.
Thank you for spending some time with us Aluxers.
Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another video.
We also handpicked these videos for you to watch next.
As always the conversation continues on social media.
Thanks again and we can't wait to have you back tomorrow.