O
n a stormy night in Octo-
ber, a handful of Columbia
University students met
for the first time at the
Sundial, the giant graphite
sphere that anchors the Manhattan
campus. It was 11pm, cold and raining,
but the group trekked here after being
summoned by text messages and flyers
pasted to dormitory doors and in the
library. They were here to, in the words
of one student at the meeting, “become
TikTokfamous”.
This was the inaugural meeting of
Columbia University’s first club
devoted to TikTok, the latest social-
media app to capture the attention of
teenagers. TikTok is owned by Byte-
Dance, a Beijing-based tech company
valued by SoftBank last year at $75bn —
making it one of the world’s most valua-
blestart-ups.Itclaimstohavemorethan
1bn active users, which would make it
more popular than Twitter and Snap-
chatcombined,buttrailingFacebook.
Many of those billion users are
young people hoping to parlay
the app’s burgeoning popularity
into their own. Isaac Quiles is
one of these people. At Colum-
bia, he has set out to turn his
hobby — filming silly videosin
the hopes of going viral — into a
campuswide organisation and char-
ity fundraiser.
Isaac is in his second year of univer-
sity, having moved to New York City
from Worcester, an industrial college
town in Massachusetts. He comes
across as a typical Ivy League student:
ambitious and well-spoken, with aton. He’s searching for sponsors and has
set an initial goal for the club to raise
$2,000 for Operation Smile, a non-
profitthatfundscleftpalatesurgeries.At 18, Isaac feels almosttoo old for
TikTok. Many of his friends make fun of
him for using the app; they are prima-
rily glued to Instagram, which he sees as
“basically a fun version of LinkedIn”
due to its emphasis on a polished image.
“Alotofpeopledidn’ttakethisideaseri-
ously because it’s a sort of goofy social-
mediaformat,”heexplains.
But for a generation that have had
smartphones since middle school or
even earlier, TikTok’s goofiness is part
of its magic. Teenagers today have
watched their peersbroadcast their
lives online for years, with some even
becoming millionaires through plat-
forms such as YouTube, whose first
videowasuploadedonApril232005.
As their parents once flocked to Face-
book, young people have found their
own communities by filming them-
selves with the front-facing cameras on
their smartphones and posting their
thoughts to the world through websites
and apps. Their infatuation with videohas spawned a new media hierarchy
with its own pantheon of celebrities. In
the UK, about half of teens between 12
and 15 years old said they watch vlog-
gers, according to an Ofcom survey ear-
lierthisyear.
The influence of this internet show-
manship is still being worked out.
Seventy-eight per cent of teens that
Ofcom surveyed said they felt pressure
to “look popular” on Instagram, which
has become heavily commercialised,
with highly edited vacation photos and
brand-sponsored posts. Meanwhile
Facebook has become overpopulated
with political adverts and a decidedly
oldercohort.
TikTok, in comparison, is ight andl
silly, filled withslapstick humour. The
more absurd it is, the more popular a
video is likely to become, creators who
use the app told me. Skitsoften veer
into the cringeworthy, which makes
sense given that karaoke in real life is
embarrassing.
Like most things that teens become
enamoured with, it has also become a
big business seemingly overnight.
ByteDance recently denied reports thatago, or a new version of Vine, the popu-
lar six-second video app that Twitter
bought in 2012 and shut down in 2016.
Two-thirds of TikTok users are under
the age of 30, and users on average
spend a whopping 52 minutes per day
ontheapp.
Investorshavetakennote.“AsTikTok
has become more visible to investors
(likelythroughwatchingtheirchildren’s
mobile behaviour), they have begun to
view TikTok as a threat to Snapchat,”
warnedRichGreenfield,apartneratthe
technologyresearchfirm LightShed.Continued on page 2it is eyeing an IPO in Hong Kong as soon
as the spring. In 2017, the company
acquired Musical.ly, the karaoke app,
forabout$1bn,andabsorbeditintoTik-
Tok. Mark Zuckerberg recently had to
quell concerns from Facebook employ-
ees about the threat from TikTok,
according to leaked audio tapes. The
app’s influence has even caught the eye
of Washington. US regulators last week
opened an investigation into ByteDance
after members of Congress xpressede
concern that the app could sendusers’
databacktoChina.
Nearly everyone I spoke to likened
TikTok to what YouTube was 10 yearsHow to become
TikTok famous
The social app has transfixed a generation that
consumes video like never before.AnnaNicolaou
meets the teens who are powering a $75bn start-up
Above: the
Columbia
University
TikTok Club
attempts to
make a world-
beating viral
videoBelow: Isaac
Quiles and Rob
Hwang, the
club’s foundersPhotographs for
the FT by
Patrick Driscoll‘A lot of people
didn’t take this idea
seriously because
it’s a sort of goofy
social-media format’
surprisingly extensive LinkedIn profile
for someone only a year out of high
school. Isaac is majoring in sustainable
development, after dropping previous
ambitions to go to medical school. He’s
a member of Columbia’s Asia-Pacific
American Heritage club; on the week-
ends he volunteers with underprivi-
legedkids.
But in between studies and résumé-
padding activities, Isaac spends an hour
or two every night meeting with his
friend Rob Hwang to plot ideas that are
“obscure enough” to gain traction on
TikTok, on which they go by the user-
name @waterpong. TikTok is a short-
form video app that offers users sophis-
ticated editing tools and visual effects;
lip synching, comedy sketches and
“challenge” dance videos dominate the
app,whichisfreetouse.
Isaac and Rob’s fascination with Tik-
Tokwasborneoutofboredom.Isaacisa
songwriter and Rob a creative writing
major, and TikTok was “an outlet for us
to express ourselves in weird ways”
amideverydaystresses,Isaacsays.
Isaac and Rob browse the trends on
TikTokdailytoseewhat’spopular,gath-
ering clues about what kinds of videos
rise above the rest. For the karaoke vid-
eos, a beat drop and simple lyrics that
are easy to gesture to or mime do well.
Brevity is best, meaning under 30
seconds. “It’s all kind of spur of the
moment: what’s the strangest thing we
can do and most relatable thing we
can think of?” Isaac says. “Strange
andrelatableresonates.”
They’ve tried stunts to get views,
such as lying on the floor spraying
whipped cream on Isaac’s face (“that
onedidn’thittheviewsthatwehoped”).
Their brush with TikTok fame amec
from another such idea, though: Rob
corners Isaac in an elevator and slaps
him in the face with a tortilla covered in
sriracha hot sauce, synchronised to the
Village People’s “YMCA”. This video has
beenviewedmorethan1.4mtimes.
Ever industrious, Isaac wants the club
eventuallytospanotherIvyLeagueuni-
versities such as Harvard and Prince-Saturday 9 November/ Sunday 10 November 2019Follow us on Instagram @ft_weekend
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