Beijing based ByteDance’s (“inform, entertain, and inspire people”) application TikTok saw a massive rise in users during December 2018, jumping by 275 percent and climbing to 75 million in total. Originally the audience was captive in China, but the tail end of 2018 and the start of 2019 saw a growing global audience.
Next to China, the market where TikTok has seen the greatest success is in India. According to Sensor Tower, India accounts for 27 percent of new TikTok installs during the past year-to-date (based on measured downloads of the app). TikTok generates its revenue from in-app purchases, which are used for tipping live streamers. In a typical month, the social media video app sees around $6 million spent.
The growth with the app has accelerated since ByteDance purchased U.S.-based rival Musical.ly in November 2017 for $800 million and then proceeded to bring Musical.ly together with TikTok. Below is an example of a TikTok video:
TikTok’s appeal is with a young demographic and it is similar to the short-lasting video app that was run by Twitter, called Vine. The most popular videos, which are limited to 15-second clips, are either those where videos are manipulated to enable “lip-syncing” and for act-out memes, which are accompanied by music and other sound clips. The most popular of these are reproduced and remixed by users.