A revolution called TikTok: the key to the success of the social network over which China and the United States enter into dispute | TECHNOLOGY

But when did this social network grow so much? Why is there practically no person who doesn’t use it? What has been the key to your success?

TikTok It appears in 2017, although it was born a year earlier under the name Douyin in China, and belongs to the company ByteDance. Today it can boast of being one of the most important platforms in the world: according to information from the Digital 2024 Global Overview Report, TikTok has 1.56 billion users, only behind Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Whatsapp.

Furthermore, another important detail of the evaluation is that TikTok It had the highest average time per user of any app between July and September 2023, with the platform’s typical Android user logging 34 hours per month.

On the other hand, a study by the Statista website indicates that in January 2024 the United States was the country in the world with the largest TikTok audience (without taking into account Douyin) with about 148 million users.

What are these figures due to?

For teacher Alonso Vilchez, the key is more human than one might believe. “[TikTok] has been able to make that match between the curiosity that human beings have and the amount of content alternatives that there are, in being able to offer you a lot of variety. So, that has allowed people to become much more interested in knowing how to handle the issue of hook-up times.”indicated the director of the Professional School of Administration and Marketing of the Autonomous University of Peru.

And one of the characteristics of TikTok is its short duration (60 seconds), although currently it can reach three minutes, and one of the reasons would be to avoid causing boredom in the public.

Another important factor in the success of TikTok It is the algorithm, which is actually a set of audience segmentation formulas, just like other social networks do, Vilchez details. For this, there is data on the type of user, tastes, time of use, location, even the type of device used.

“All of this leads us to optimize what we may like. So, TikTok works the algorithm in such a way that it can finally lead us to, let’s say, show something that we are going to like. Maybe we didn’t even know we were going to like it.”commented to Trade.

A revolution that adapts

TikTok It changed the way we think about social networks. In fact, even the way of watching the videos went from a horizontal format to a vertical format, with a more interactive, agile and fun dynamic, to which more formal institutions such as banks, universities, governments, etc. have been added. .

And the social network created by Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, has known how to adapt to the times. In 2017, TikTok bought Musical.ly, a social network that had a teenage audience in the United States, and took over the feature.

“It was very focused on a much younger audience, a 12-year-old teenager; However, it then evolves through the same network and the content that it expands. This leads to the range increasing,” said Vilchez, so now the public of TikTok It is young people and young adults, between 18 and 34 years old, who are the ones who use the platform the most.

And this is where another factor comes in: money. TikTok has become an important platform for the market, with an audience that also has the ability to spend.

In 2023 alone, investment in social media advertising as a whole increased by 9.3 percent compared to 2022, reaching a total of $207 billion, according to a Statista report. In addition, they have become a space for programmatic advertising using robots.

And like other social networks, TikTok also monetizes content and has contributed to creating new job aspirations. “A few years ago, if you asked a boy at school, he would say ‘I want to be a doctor, I want to be an engineer.’ Now you ask him and he says ‘I want to be an influencer’. Obviously the social network allows you to monetize and earn money as long as you generate good content, both as a person who wants to be a TikToker and for a company or an entrepreneur.”explains the professor.

What if TikTok wasn’t there?

TikTok He has not been immune to controversies. The most recent is the one who lives in the United States, due to alleged espionage that has put her one step away from being banned if she does not cut off relations with her parent company ByteDance, and in general with China.

What other social network could take its place? The offer is quite wide. For the digital marketing specialist, one of the possible successors would be BeReal, a social network that appeared in 2022 with a proposal for “more real-time” publications.

But it’s not the only one. More traditional social networks such as YouTube have been adapted with functions such as Short, very similar to the short publications of TikTok. “[El cambio] it is necessary. If the social network does not change, it will remain in time. If it stays, it will lose users,” Vilchez explained.

Without a doubt, there are many aspects to be addressed regarding TikTok. Regardless of what may happen in the United States, it already has an important role in the history of social networks, and the changes it initiated will continue.