In the beginning there was YouTube, and YouTube reigned supreme in the realms of video sharing.
Then not so long ago a new application came onto the scene, something you could say was
a “David” to the “Goliath” of YouTube.
It’s name was TikTok.
This once little app has experienced what you might call a meteoric rise, not only in
its home base of China, but all over the world.
TikTok is now a Goliath itself, but will it ever be bigger than YouTube?
That’s the question we are asking today.
Before we get all statistical on you, you should know something about the two products.
They are alike, and also not alike.
If you’re not a TikTok fan, we need to explain to you how it works.
It’s more of a do it yourself app than YouTube, that’s one main thing.
Users can create short video clips, but the reason it’s so popular with people is the
fact they can edit those clips and get creative.
They can star in their own short clips, and by using the editing features they can do
things like slow up or speed down time, and they can do this to music.
They can also use augmented reality, and users can get very creative with this technology.
So, TikTok is more like social media with artistic expression.
Kind of like an Instagram for video, with people commenting on the short productions
that have been created by the users.
They become stars in their homemade shows, some of which have been quite skillfully edited.
Part of its popularity has been creating memes and trends that people follow and then add
their own version.
So, you might have seen things like the hashtag “pillow challenge” or the hashtag bottle
cap challenge or the pose challenge.
It’s all pretty simplistic, but people can’t get enough of it.
The numbers don’t lie.
YouTube is a different beast altogether.
You might go to YouTube to watch lengthy videos involving people paying games.
You might watch newsreels from 1976.
You might listen to podcasts on science, crime, sports, or whatever else takes your fancy.
You might go to YouTube to be educated, to laugh, or for some people, to watch sports
games from the past.
In short, in terms of content, YouTube is more like a universe while TikTok is merely
a star…although a very bright star.
TikTok was launched in China in 2016 and had a couple of names before it actually became
TikTok.
One of those was “Douyin” and after only one year of being out it had 100 million users
and a staggering one billion video views per day.
In 2017, it hit the international market and soon became the number one downloaded app
in a lot of countries.
As we speak, it has around 800 million active users around the world, and it's been downloaded
around 80 million times in the USA alone.
Overall, it has been downloaded around two billion times.
In February of 2020 alone it was downloaded 113 million times.
People can’t get enough of it, although because it’s from China some government
officials in the U.S. have asked if TikTok could be a Chinese government surveillance
weapon.
Given the habit of the Chinese government, which is always concerned with censorship,
to embed government employees in senior positions of powerful companies, it’s a good bet that
TikTok has some Chinese government links.
Videos on Tibet or Taiwan are frequently flagged and deleted, though the real question is if
this is happening outside of China as well.
Its owner, Bytedance, has said a million times that users or governments don’t have anything
to fear, but the Department of Defense isn’t buying it.
In terms of global downloads, there was only one mobile app that was downloaded more in
2019.
Can you guess what that was…Yep, you’re right, it was WhatsApp.
Tik Tok is available in 154 countries and in 39 languages, but what’s also quite incredible
is the fact that when something is posted, on average it has a higher engagement rate
than both Instagram and Twitter.
People who have it, love it, and the stats tell us that 90 percent of users will go to
the app multiple times in a day.
The company Bytedance is now valued at $78 billion...not bad for a company that bought
an app that was made in just 200 days.
Ok, so TikTok has taken over the world, but we must remember that the world is big enough
for many different apps.
There’s no reason why a person can’t divide their time on various platforms.
There's one particular platform that is used by 44 percent of people that regularly use
the Internet, and it is called YouTube.
Google wisely bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.
That was a really smart acquisition, as you will soon find out.
. People spend hours and hours watching movies
and documentaries on YouTube, or genuinely educating themselves by listening to mathematicians,
scientists, philosophers, or channels that make animations out of factual stories.
Users tune into their favorite YouTube stars, their favorite channels, and there is a mind-bogglingly
massive variety of content.
You might feel like watching an Infographics Show video in the morning, and then decide
you want to watch Joe Rogan talk about viruses with someone in the afternoon.
At night you don’t know what you want to watch and end up watching small creatures
fight.
Centipede vs scorpion fights seem to be popular.
5.4 million people have watched just one of those fights.
YouTube is full of nonsense and brilliance and everything in between, and if millions
of people watch animal fights, then we can expect that YouTube videos in general have
been watched many, many times.
YouTube creators have created content that is arguably better than some content on TV.
Some channels are not only educational, but also original and sometimes groundbreaking.
These channels filled a hole... they fitted into a space that was needed in this world.
TV wasn’t offering enough, and YouTube has helped creative individuals to excel and build
businesses.
As you probably know, some of the more popular channels are making millions of dollars.
Have you heard of a young boy named Ryan Kaji?
There’s a video of him playing on an inflatable water slide and it has been watched over 1.9
billion times.
Yes, you heard that right.
Last year his channel made $26 million.
Sure, a video on TikTok got 17.9 million likes last year, but this is not remotely in the
same league as some YouTube videos.
Plenty of videos on YouTube have several billion views.
TikTok has made a dent in the world, but YouTube has changed it.
So, what are the current YouTube stats?
Well, we can look at the top channels and it is unbelievable how much their content
has been viewed.
T-Series videos have been viewed 105,162,784,257 times.
PewDiePie, a one man army for the most part, has had his videos
viewed 25,187,812,649 times.
The channel you are watching right now has over two billion video views.
Thanks for watching people!. YouTube has over 1.9 billion active monthly
users, and it’s expected that by the year 2025 much more of the world will be opting
out of TV and turning to platforms like YouTube.
Every month, 90% of Americans aged 18-24 year olds use YouTube, while 80 percent of Americans
aged 18-49 will watch YouTube.
Just on mobile, more 18-49 year olds watch YouTube than any broadcast or cable TV network,
in the USA at least.
The platform has launched in 91 countries and can be used in 80 languages.
This has made it the most visited platform in the world after Google.com.
Every single minute of the day around 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube and
one billion hours of content is watched on YouTube every day.
That’s more than Netflix and Facebook together.
And unlike TikTok, YouTube viewers on average watch content for 40 minutes.
Just on mobile, one billion videos are viewed every day.
In total, around five billion different videos are viewed each day on YouTube.
And if you look at data as to why people go to this platform, well, it’s not just to
watch someone kicking a bottle cap.
Most people go there to learn something about the world or to find out how to do something.
About 20 percent of people are there to look at products and about 30 percent go there
to pass time…maybe those are the guys watching small animals have fights.
According to the data, many older people go to YouTube for reasons of nostalgia, while
younger viewers are more interested in learning.
Channels making more than one million dollars per year have been increasing yearly by around
40 percent, so YouTube has become a game changer in terms of how people make money.
The number of smaller channels that have turned into a job has also been steadily increasing.
Because YouTube is still on this upwards trajectory and more and more people are making brilliant
channels, its value keeps increasing.
Don’t expect Google to sell anytime soon, unless someone offers the company an insane
amount of money.
The standalone platform could be worth a whopping $300 billion for Google, or at least Google’s
parent company, Alphabet.
TikTok is certainly no flash in the pan, and you can expect it will become much more popular,
but the YouTube universe is ever-expanding.
The kinds of content you will see on YouTube will get even better, more educational, more
exciting, funnier, more professional and more entertaining.
TikTok cannot compete with this, and we don’t think it wants to.
It’s its own rising star, there’s no doubt about that, but there’s little chance it
will outshine YouTube in the years to come.
Now go watch this video, “Fortnite vs PUBG: Which Battle Royale Is the Best?” or this
video, “PewDiePie vs T-Series - Who Will Win?”