What is TikTok?

TikTok is the advanced video sharing app that showcases short and sweet videos, ranging anywhere from knowledge-sharing content, art, dance patterns and memes.

Here's a short history of how TikTok happened.

Launched at first as Douyin in late 2016 in China, the app exceeded 100 million users within a year. Soon after, TikTok was born to explicitly get in the western market as the international equivalent. To support TikTok's growth into the market, their China-based parent business, ByteDance, obtained and combined TikTok with Musica.ly in 2018. The music-focused app was popular amongst Gen-Z and gave ByteDance easy access to their target market. Thus turning TikTok into one of the most downloaded apps in history.

With over 1.5 billion downloads on the App Store and Google Play, TikTok stands proud with over 500 million active users around the world ¹, so it is not surprising that you have actually heard the name drifting around lately.

But why is it popular?

Here at Commission Factory, we were likewise similarly as stumped regarding exactly why and how TikTok rose to the likes of Will Smith, the NBA, Post Malone and even The Washington Post, to name-drop a few. There need to be a reason this app has the attention of these stars and major business.

First of all, let's speak about how the app works. ByteDance has produced an app with the most straightforward, unique capability for anyone to develop and access a limitless pool of videos with very little effort. It is extremely simple to point, shoot, modify and publish a video without requiring to invest hours learning an editing tool initially. Rather, it's intuitively experimental and enjoyable. Sharing and revealing creativity is especially relevant to users, and TikTok's proposal as an accessible imaginative outlet as rated as the top reason that users enjoy the app ²

. This availability draws in the interest of generation Z and Millenials; and naturally because all their buddies are using it. Although, what is TikTok doing in a different way to keep its users where Vine couldn't? TikTok keeps their algorithm rather hush-hush from the public as it is not surprisingly their strategic USP (special selling point). One of the algorithm's metrics that has been hypothesised online is 'Collaborative Filtering'. This is basically among the app's ways to occupy and recommend videos on the users 'For You' page, aka the web page. Collaborative Filtering works by finding users who have actually followed and liked comparable things to you, then recommending videos and other "TikTokers" based upon what they have actually followed or liked. In addition, the app populates videos based on your geolocation, which is now quite typical amongst many apps.

Lots of users are trying to 'crack' TikTok's algorithm to create viral videos, while others are genuinely curious. As the For You page appears rather arbitrarily inhabited, users have actually jointly started commenting 'fyp' (For you page) to attempt and deceive the app's algorithm to include the video onto other user's For You age. It is presently unidentified whether this cumulative effort has actually worked.

The algorithm is certainly the reason behind the appeal of TikTok and is what sets it apart from other social networks channels. And when the interest from half of the world's Gen Z and Millennial population is won-over, the big wheel entered play, i.e., celebrities, e-commerce business and other multi-million dollar businesses. Industrialism begins, and they begin to manifest on the capacity of added monetisation.

The TikTok Audience

TikTok has, without a doubt been misinterpreted, with lots of believing the app is a waste of time, anti-social and restricting the mental capacity and imagination of teenagers. We can hear the baby boomers recollecting their stories of the outdoors and remembering a life before the evils of technology in our pockets.But who exactly is making the clock tick on TikTok? 500 million teenagers? TikTok's active users appear to be coming from a mix of people from numerous generations, tiktok for business marketing backgrounds and geolocations. Yet, with no surprise, 41% of TikTok's demographic lies between the 16 to 24-year-old age ¹. ew patterns show that the way individuals connect online is again changing. Individuals are now disengaged and withdrawn in sharing individual updates online, which was the opposite of how Facebook was used in the early 2000s. Instead, the purpose of these social channels has been redefined. A lot of find themselves endlessly scrolling through these apps for their day-to-day dose of entertainment. This pattern has been referred to as "Passive Surfing" ².

Users on TikTok invest, typically 52 minutes daily ¹ engaging with the app. Following carefully behind the leading social networks app, Facebook, where users invest in average 58 minutes per day ³. While time invested in both of these apps include heavy passive browsing, there is a more wholesome factor users are occupied with TikTok

What makes TikTok stand out is their 2nd to none online neighborhood. It seems that users have a need to be a part of the wider neighborhood. This is shown in the several methods a user can collaborate with others. There is the ability to take part in the plentiful challenges and trending hashtags occurring every day on the app. React, reply and duet with other videos. Function trending music, or perhaps utilize the background sounds from other videos on your own material.

Following the steps of multiple social media channels, TikTok is no longer a sole guilty pleasure. The platform is progressing into a chance to make cash and possibly increase to popularity from a progressively younger age.Brand and Affiliate Monetisation on TikTok.

Marketers must absolutely welcome and use the diversity and originality of TikTok to reach their target audience. Even bigger affiliates and brand names themselves have actually produced contests and challenges by using hashtags on TikTok. An example of this is UNSW Sydney, who are ramping up their social media presence to construct a greater reach towards acquiring possible trainees. This develops a more interesting method to reach the more youthful demographic instead of using Facebook or Instagram Advertisements.