In this day and age of the internet, it seems as if a new trend or app develops every day. While much of the buzz around the creation of these applications may be hype, you should keep an eye on TikTok. Tiktok, a Chinese video-sharing app, has spread like wildfire and increased in popularity all over the world in a very short time. In 2020, it surpassed the 850-million-download mark, and it has constantly topped the Google Playstore and Apple store rankings. As a result, this isn’t an app to be ignored.
TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to share 15- to 60-second videos that are extremely fun, innovative, and engaging. People use the app to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing videos all around the world. These videos can then be shared across the platform’s communities.
So, what company owns this amazing TikTok app?
Unlike most of popular social media platforms, TikTok is not U.S-based. It is owned by a Beijing-based tech company called ByteDance. ByteDance was founded in 2012 in China by Zhang Yiming and it is now the most valuable startup in the world. There is actually some tale behind the history and launch of TikTok. So, follow through as we dig into the history behind this amazing app.
In 2014, a social media app named Musical.ly grew so much in popularity amidst persons between ages of thirteen and eighteen years. The main focus of this app was to allow its users to create videos that combined songs and videos from the users. These videos were often called musers. People mostly used it to create videos where they were either lip-syncing or dancing. Halfway into 2017, the app already had over 200 million users engaging its platform.
In 2016, a Chinese app developer based firm called ByteDancecreated an app to compete with Musical.ly. The name of this app was called Duoyin and it was launched initially in China. However, the app was then renamed and rebranded to TikTok to appeal to an international audience. In less than a year, the app had a hundred million downloads and lip syncing videos began rising in popularity.
Towards the end of 2017, ByteDance purchased Musical.ly. They combined the users of Musical.ly and TikTok and merged them into one platform under the name TikTok. With this unified brand name and user base, the popularity of the app grew stronger. In 2018, it became the most downloaded app on the Apple app store surpassing the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. As of July 2019, there have been over 500 million downloads of this app on Google Playstore.
Let’s take a look at some of the amazing features of this app.
TikTok has some basic features that allows its users to create videos, share videos, like, follow and engage with others. You do not need to have an account to watch videos on TikTok. Although, if you must react with other people’s videos, then, you need an account. You can create an account with your mail, your Google account or even your social media pages. You can then select what kind of videos you want to explore on the app.
So, let’s dive into some of those features.
- Uploading Videos
This is the most basic feature on the app. TikTok has a feature that allows its users upload their videos on the app.
- Editing Videos
TikTok also allows its users to edit or put in some additives to the videos they have filmed. Users can either crop, flip or rotate their videos.
They can also experiment with the speed of the videos. Users can also record videos in-app, choose songs they want to lip-sync to or even dance to. There is also an option to add a background song whilst recording videos.
- Filter and Effects
The editing feature of this app also comes with a lot of filters and effects. There is the very popular beauty filter, several stickers and animation effects that can be added to the videos to make up for some great content on the app.
There are also some other fun AR effects. These effects allows TikTokers to change their hair and eye color and also, add virtual features to their faces like glasses, flowers, puppy ears among so many others.
- Social Sharing and Interactions
TikTok allows its users to do more than just share videos in-app. You can also share some of the fun videos you love on the app to other social media platforms. You can even link your TikTok account to other social media accounts.
You can also interact with videos on the app by liking which are in form of hearts and commenting. You can also check out the videos you’ve liked later.
This is one very popular feature of the app. It allows users of the app to lip-sync or dance to songs they like with any other person on the app by appearing next to each other on the same screen. The other person could be a close relative, a random person on the app, or even a celebrity.
This feature helps people to partake in interesting duet challenges or trends and give them higher reach on the app.
Check out our article on how to make duets
- Hashtags
Hashtag on this app is not exactly the same way it is on every other social media platform. Unlike the popular use of hashtags being to show you what is trending, it is used here to tag users on the app. This could even serve as a means to invite them to join some fun challenges. The challenges could even be duet challenges.
There was one such popular challenge on the app which was tagged the ‘fake plane challenge’, where users posted photos as a form of disguise to show they were travelling when they were not.
Final Words
Tiktok is quite an entertaining app and it has seen its popularity grow since its launch especially because of the amazing videos and features that could be created on the app. We have shown you some of the amazing features you could take advantage of in using this app.
So, go ahead, use the app, join challenges and explore.
Check out our other articles:
