Chinese social media platform TikTok caught Meta by surprise, generating billions of downloads and doing what many have thought to be impossible.
Many of us would’ve never guessed that TikTok would take over the world so rapidly. Sparking a blind panic at established brands like Snapchat, YouTube and Instagram. Today, TikTok is one of the most downloaded apps of all time, generating over 3 billion downloads. Becoming the first non-Facebook app to reach this record breaking number and sparking Instagram and YouTube to launch their short form video alternatives, Reels and Shorts. Millions of people return to TikTok every month, with the number growing steadily. How did TikTok grow to become the world’s most popular app and how does it keep users hooked day after day?
Building Digital China
TikTok might be the most familiar to social media users, but the platform is part of a whole ecosystem of Chinese apps that have been taking over most mobile marketplaces in recent years. Chinese apps popping up everywhere shouldn’t be regarded as a mere coincidence or a sudden interest among consumers to switch to other brands. They are a well coordinated strategic effort from the Chinese government, under leadership of Xi Jinping, to shift the digital dominance away from American platforms to Chinese ones.
This strategic shift has been decades in the making and a key objective of the Chinese Communist party to tip the balance in the global digital arena. A pivotal moment happened during the 18th Party Congress in 2012, where Xi announced the country would undergo a radical digital transformation. The new program was an extension of Xi’s earlier efforts to promote digital infrastructure and governmental efficiency when he was deputy party secretary and governor of Fujian province in the year 2000.
The foreign affairs platform War on the Rocks notes that the program in Fujian served as the first experiment by the Chinese government to take ownership of a digital ecosystem. Fast forward two decades later, the scheme rolled-out by Xi in the Fujian province, has found its way into the Building Digital China program. A far reaching plan introduced by the Chinese government to boost competitiveness in the digital space and leap society into a new era.
The Building Digital China program is backed by an enormous war chest of around $2.7 trillion to upgrade and roll-out new digital infrastructure. The funding will be rolled over the course of five years, promoting the expansion of a 5G-network and gigabit optical internet speeds. A fleet of satellites will create a satellite internet network reminiscent of Elon Musk’s Starlink program. New big data centers will be erected to store and process all the data flowing between those systems.
Dr. John Hemmings from the Pacific Forum explained to the U.S. Department of State during the Foreign Press Center Briefing that the expansion of China’s digital strategy is more than just upgrading the country’s capabilities, most of all, Hemmings highlighted, the roll-out of the Digital China program is ideological in nature.
Xi is fully aware that data is the new oil, but through the lens of communist doctrine, it’s an avenue to rewrite and expand the Marxist playbook and bring it into the modern world. Data will lead the revolution to a contemporary interpretation of the Marxist economic theory with China in the lead. This also explains why China has published its digital strategy in English over the course of 2023, which serves as an announcement to the world that the Asian nation will become the face of a new, communist world-view.
Hemmings comments that, while Western media have labeled it as a digital strategy, for China, it comes as part of the total infrastructure package, better known as the Belt and Road Initiative. A plan bigger than the famous Silk Road during more primitive times. International dominance is but one part of the infrastructure upgrade. By pushing the digital agenda, the Communist Party ensures it keeps a tight leash over the digital landscape, being able to enact control over its citizens and other forms of government.
Douyin origins
As the Chinese government was pushing to shift the power balance in the digital arena, domestic technology companies were launching local versions of global apps, including social media platforms. One of them was Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. While these two apps are developed and managed by the same company, they both exist separately, catering to two different audiences.
The company behind Douyin and TikTok, ByteDance, was founded by Liang Rubo and Zhang Yiming in 2012. The time coincided with Xi’s plan to accelerate the country’s digital presence. Both were college roommates during their time at the Nankai University in Tianjin. Before the team at ByteDance launched its now famous social media platforms, they released several apps, including the meme-app Neihan Duanzi and later, news aggregator app Toutiao, which used machine learning to deliver personalized news feeds to its users. A mechanic that is a major contributor to TikTok’s ability to keep users engaged. Toutiao was the first big hit for the company, attracting over 300 million monthly active users.
But, Toutiao would also serve as a stark reminder that ByteDance had to abide by the Communist Party’s playbook. A shadow that follows TikTok wherever it goes. In April 2018, as the Chinese government worked to get a tighter grip on internet communications, regulators at The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT) ordered ByteDance to remove Neihan Duanzi account’s from Toutiao, claiming it was spreading inappropriate content on the platform. The origins of Douyin contextualize how TikTok was able to break into the international market and why concerns related to domestic security are being raised by policymakers around the world. Douyin, which launched in 2016 in China, saw rapid adoption throughout China.
TikTok goes global
After finding a comfortable footing in China, ByteDance was ready to take on the world with TikTok. In November 2017, ByteDance announced it would acquire the popular lip-sync platform Musical.ly for an estimated $1 billion. The acquisition of the rivaling Chinese platform is a pivotal moment in ByteDance’s history. ByteDance had a strong presence in China, but abroad, its domestic rival, Musical.ly had far greater success. Musical.ly launched in 2014 and attracted massive audiences and remained one of the top performing apps in the App Store ever since its debut. An enviable status ByteDance was trying to meet as well.
The mechanics behind the Musical.ly were simple. The social media app gave users the opportunity to create 15-second videos, where they could lip-sync and dance to their own videos. At the time, this was revolutionary. Over the course of 2016, close to its eventual acquisition by ByteDance, 10 million people used Musical.ly every day, with 70 million users registered on the platform.
The team behind the platform believed it was not the lip-syncing, but the social aspect that kept users around. As abstract as the reasons for users to return to the platform may be, the acquisition by ByteDance paved the way for what we know today as TikTok. In August 2018, ByteDance rebranded Musical.ly to TikTok. Users from Musical.ly were migrated to the new app, maintaining their existing accounts. Next, ByteDance had to pour money into making the world familiar with TikTok and get as many international users on board as it possibly could.
Promoting TikTok
TikTok wouldn’t be the behemoth that it is today, without promoting the product extensively and partnering with large brands and institutions to engage different communities around the world. After its rebranding, the Chinese social media company has been selecting agencies around the world that would help it create brand awareness and add new users to its platform outside of China. Venturing outside one’s domestic market is challenging, as ad inventory and regulations differ per region. By adding agencies with expertise in local markets, TikTok could pivot itself toward selected target audiences.
In February 2019, TikTok selected media agency Total Media, who would plan and buy ad spaces to target audiences between the ages of 18 to 34 years old throughout France, Germany and the UK. A few months later in August 2019, TikTok selected PHD to handle all its international media planning and buying. PHD would work together with local agencies to launch tailored campaigns where necessary. In the same month, London-based Climb Online, welcomed TikTok as its client to execute its search engine marketing strategy throughout Europe and the UK. Climb Online worked with other notable clients such as Hewlett Packard and Emirates. It would help TikTok acquire new customers and drive engagement with its product.
In May 2020, PHD launched the first UK television ad for TikTok, featuring celebrities like Tinie Tempah and Gordon Ramsey. The TV ad, called #BrighterInside, would be accompanied by a social media campaign. In August 2020, TikTok moved its business away from PHD, who lost its one-year contract, to The Publicis Groupe agency Zenith. On top of selecting the right agencies to promote its product, TikTok partnered with big brands to nestle itself in mainstream audiences.
In August 2021, the social media platform announced its partnership with the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team (AMCF1), becoming the team’s official creator partner. Logos from TikTok would be prominently featured on the driver’s headrest and the protective halo. The halo is frequently in view during races and combined with the placement on the headrest, the logo is featured prominently during promotional material. In the press release, the Sports Marketing Lead at TikTok EMEA, Harley Johnson, commented that the partnership would help the brand to expand into the sports segment, allowing the platform to attract potential new audiences to the app.
In June 2022, TikTok was present at the annual creator convention VidCon. The presence of the platform during events like VidCon is of great strategic importance, as it is able to showcase and engage with influencers and media creators that attract millions of people across the world. Prominent creators on the platform with massive followings such as James Henry were selected to promote how TikTok has helped them to reach and connect new and existing audiences. Top-level executives from TikTok, together with influencers, shared how they have been able to grow on the platform. Without content pushed by its most popular creators, TikTok is but an empty shell. By ensuring they stay on board and have a means to directly interact with the platform owners, TikTok positioned itself as a reliable employer.
In March 2023, Ed Sheeran gave an exclusive preview of his new single Eyes Closed on TikTok in anticipation of his upcoming album. The single would be exclusive for a period of six days. Ed Sheeran is a popular creator on the platform having over 13 million followers and collecting over 145 million likes.
In August 2023, TikTok collaborated with FiFA to promote the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, launching a dedicated hub on the platform where fans can view pre-match info, behind-the-scenes content and post-match analysis. The growth between 2020 to 2023, has been spectacular for the platform. In the United States alone TikTok had 100 million monthly active users in August 2020, growing to 150 million in March 2023. Perhaps one of the most influential partnerships came a few months later, with Disney.
Disney joins TikTok
TikTok had reached massive adoption and was pulling in not only celebrities and artists such as Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk, but big brands like Disney were ready to intensify their cooperation with the platform. In October 2023, Disney and TikTok announced their content collaboration project, celebrating the media company’s 100th anniversary. Disney would bring exclusive and interactive content to the platform to give its fans the opportunity to express their love for the franchises in the Disney catalog. Global Head of Content at TikTok, Nicole Iacopetti, was delighted to deliver exclusive content to fans across Tiktok.
Embracing TikTok was a logical avenue of Disney, who already saw strong engagement with its content on the platform. Chief Brand Officer of The Walt Disney Company, Asad Ayaz, pointed out that its content had already reached more than 240 billion views. Ayaz added that with TikTok it could take its content to the next level, delivering a unique, first-of-its-kind, experience to its fans. In the press release, TikTok highlighted that hashtags related to Disney franchises had amassed hundreds of billions of views. #marvel accumulated 277 billion views and #encanto 31.8 billion. Combined, these two franchises alone generated over 300 billion views. For TikTok, a whole new content opportunity arose. Being able to serve more tailored content to its users.
TikTok’s algorithm keeps you scrolling
A key element that keeps users engaged on TikTok is its refined algorithm, which has a unique edge compared to its main competitors. In June 2020, TikTok outlined how it recommends videos to its users. The platform uses a ranking system that is home to a wide range of factors to determine which videos it will recommend to its users. The most obvious ones are user interactions such as likes, shares, comments and the accounts followed. This is enhanced by captions, hashtags and sounds present in and alongside the videos. Another layer is added to ensure the videos match to the geographic location and language. Device type is used to ensure the app delivers a smooth user experience.
Determining user interests is perhaps the most difficult challenge any social platform, or product, has to overcome. Providing a poor initial experience can lead to a user abandoning the product very quickly. In order to assess the interests of its users, TikTok invites new sign-ups to select a few initial categories that are of interest. This is similar to the approach of Twitter (X) and is part of what the marketing industry calls user onboarding, which is one of the most crucial steps after acquiring a new customer.
If the user skips the category selection part, TikTok displays videos from a broad range of topics to create a basic profile, which serves as the backbone for further personalization. As users keep interacting with the app, TikTok actively monitors these ranking factors to determine which of the videos shown to the user have performed the best. They receive additional weight when the user has more interactions with the content.
An important differentiation between other social media platforms is brought forward by TikTok. The company doesn’t determine which video should be served based on follower count or virality. As platform observers, we can label this as creator democratization, where content is not served based on previous performance by a particular account.
All recommendations are based on the user’s interests. Those who’ve paid close attention on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram will see a similar move rolled-out by said platforms. As for the creator, this means they have to know what captivates their specific target audience. They cannot rely on their follower count to generate views and interactions, which puts additional stress on the creator. Fame can disappear as fast it comes.
Finding the perfect code to keep users engaging with the product fits in a broader strategy that all other companies operating in online entertainment are desperately trying to crack. The rationale behind this operational model is fairly simple. By keeping users engaged with the app, they won’t have time left to spend it elsewhere. As time is spent on the platform more ads and promoted content can be shown, whilst a user profile gets more detailed. From a business perspective this is the most logical thing to do, but this has severe negative health implications for its users.
TikTok Tics
The ability of TikTok to serve content that caters to the users interests through an endless stream of short form videos, results in impressive, yet worrying, usage statistics, even overtaking Youtube. In 2020, an adult in the United States spent an average of 39 minutes on TikTok, and 44 minutes on YouTube. The following year, minutes spent on TikTok jumped to 44 minutes, with YouTube only adding one minute. In 2022, a tipping point occurred, where TikTok matched YouTube with the amount of minutes spent on its platform, now reaching 46 minutes.
In 2023, TikTok overtook Youtube, with users now spending 47 minutes on the platform, with an expected growth to 48 minutes in 2024. Seeing the ability of TikTok’s uncanny recommendation algorithm to keep users engaged with the platform might be the envy of any digital media platform, but it can venture into extreme and disturbing mental health implications in vulnerable population demographics.
In 2022, news started to surface that increased TikTok media consumption amongst adolescents over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, led to increasing numbers of Tourette syndrome (TS) and tic disorders. The phenomenon TikTok has triggered among a subset of its users is better known as a mass sociogenic illness. While the people in question are not officially diagnosed nor are there any underlying medical conditions, they display the same characteristics.
In the case of TikTok, researchers in the United States found a correlation between platform usage and the rise of functional tic-like behavior (FTLB). The researchers discovered that by consuming tic related videos, viewers, who were often female, started to develop symptoms of their own. Users experiencing tics had no predisposition to these neurological disorders nor was it running in their families. The symptoms found, also corresponded with content spread across TikTok. Tic observations have increased as the time spent on TikTok increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through medication, counseling and stress management, tic disorders at these particular patients could be subdued.
Sociogenic disorders, however, aren’t a new phenomenon, Senior Faculty Editor at Harvard Health Publishing, Robert H. Shmerling, MD, commented, in response to the rise of tics in relation to TikTok. During the middle ages, so-called dancing plagues existed. An epidemic of involuntary tremors was recorded in 1982. The occurrence of epidemic neurological disorders, or the emulation of symptoms, can be categorized under nocebo. As the name suggests, it’s the opposite of nocebo. A pseudo medicine that triggers a negative response. Why some are more susceptible to this type of content is unknown Shmerling points out. However, it shows that without proper guide rails, TikTok can be more of a destructive force, than one for the better.
Disrupting social media
Through TikTok, ByteDance has dramatically reshaped the social media landscape, giving existing players a run for their money. With Douyin, ByteDance had found a formula that attracted millions of users in China, showing there was a business case for short-form video. In order to go global it had to first eliminate domestic competition and buy its way into the international market.
This was made possible by acquiring Musical.ly which had millions of followers outside of China. The acquisition served as the pathway for TikTok to aggressively expand abroad. By partnering with international agencies, celebrities and brands, it captured strong momentum, adding millions of users to its platform month-over-month, year-over-year with little signs of slowing down.