14 March 2020 | New Scientist | 31Video app
TikTok
IT HAS rejuvenated the music
industry and given birth to a
new generation of celebrities,
including the likes of Charli d’Amelio,
a 15-year-old social media
personality and dancer. More
than 3 million people a day
downloaded video app TikTok
in January, according to tracking
company Sensor Tower. Its rise
to become one of the big beasts of
social media has been remarkable,
so how did TikTok do it?
The app, which people use
to share short videos, often
accompanied by clips of music,
is a modern media phenomenon.
The firm sponsored the BRIT
awards for music in February, with
chart-topping singer Lewis Capaldi
as its poster boy. Actors including
Will Smith, and music stars like
Justin Bieber, also use it.
TikTok’s parent company
ByteDance, based in Beijing, China,
bought an advert to promote the
app at American Football’s flagship
Super Bowl game, and the Jama
Masjid, one of the largest mosques
in India, has posted signs outside
its door saying “TikTok is strictly
prohibited” after a video of two
women doing a headstand inside
its premises went viral.
Some people say its success is
down to its brief content. “TikTok
separated themselves brilliantly
from the rest, focused on the things
they’re good at and reinvented
short-form content when the rest
of the world is turning to long form
with companies like Netflix,” says
Harry Hugo, co-founder of The
Goat Agency, a marketing firm.
Unlike everything else, the platform
“allows you to be effortlessly
famous in a very short amount
of time”, says Hugo. It is also buoyed
by the fact that the videos are no
more than 60 seconds long, and
usually more like 10 or 15, and
presented in an endless scroll.
“People don’t have a very long
attention span nowadays, so it’s
appropriate the videos are short,”
says Anna Bogomolova, who posts
content including her dancing to
popular songs and performing
comedy skits. Bogomolova has
2.3 million followers on the app.
She initially posted on Musical.ly,
an app that allowed users to
lip-sync to their favourite songs,
before it merged into TikTok in
August 2018. The change was
significant, she says: “Now
because people are doing
dances, comedy, acting or art,
everyone else is encouraged
to try different things as well.”
This gives it great appeal,
says Rich Waterworth, general
manager of TikTok in the UK.
“What makes TikTok so popular
is that the experience is different
for everyone: there’s no one
thing that defines it,” he says.“So much of what trends on TikTok
has become the origin of cultural
conversation in the mainstream.
Our success lies in capturing
moments in the lives of ordinary
people, like the farmer at
@caenhillcc in rural England,
teaching people the ins and outs
of agriculture, or self-trained
comedian @ameliagething,
whose popularity on TikTok
landed her a professional career
in broadcasting.”
The app is also adding
options to make money through
a creator marketplace, which
connects brands to talent,
and in-app advertising.
Since the merger with Musical.ly,
TikTok’s popularity has exploded.
ByteDance doesn’t release figures,
but a leaked media kit for potential
advertisers in December 2018
showed that the average user
opened the app 121 times a week,
and spent nearly 27 minutes a day
in it. TikTok's meteoric rise shows
few signs of slowing. ❚TikTok’s brief videos
may work well for our
short-attention spans
Chris Stokel-Walker is a technology
writer based in Newcastle, UKAFP VIA GETTY IMAGESTikTok’s global surge
More than 3 million people a day are downloading a
video-sharing app. Chris Stokel-Walker explores why
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