The explosion of TikTok

Trends, dances, cooking, curious facts, fashion, funny videos, information: the TikTok is a content universe, where we can find everything and a little bit more. The most famous social network of the moment is an entertainment machine, which has the power to make and break careers. In this article, you will learn more about the platform and the reason for its success.

TikTok is a social network that consists of short video sharing, usually 15 seconds, but at most 3 minutes. The platform, which was already widely known, saw a explosion in its number of active users during the pandemic. In 2020, according to data from the Sensor Tower, the social network gained more than 750 million active users, which represented a 85% growth compared to the previous year and which caused the total number of active users to exceed the threshold of billions.

Since then, TikTok has become a craze, having been consecutively the most downloaded app in the world in 2020, 2021 and 2022, with more than already by the end of 2021 three billion downloads. There are several reasons why the platform has become so popular. First of all, TikTok is extremely easy to use, allowing the user to create and share videos in a few minutes - an aspect that has been increasingly developed by the company, which launched in 2020 the CapCut, a “brother” of TikTok, focused on video editing. On the other hand, the platform ends up becoming quite addictive, due to the quick and easy-to-watch content, with a multitude of videos on various topics.

TikTok has revolutionized the social media industry. In addition to abandoning the traditional text and image format of its competitors, the social network also has a different way of presenting content. While on Instagram or Facebook, it is necessary to follow friends and celebrities to see their content, on TikTok you just need to open the app to come across the For You Page ("For You"), an updated feed with new and diverse content, specially selected and of custom shape for the user. 

Your innovation has made it increasingly common for other social networks to copy TikTok, by introducing tools that are the same or similar to those of the platform, as is the case with Instagram Reels, of the YouTube Shorts or even from the "For You" page, of the Twitter. 

Another aspect that made TikTok become so relevant was its viral strand. There is a vast amount of platform content that ends up being shared on other social networks, but more than that, on TikTok it is possible to be taken to stardom with just one video of success on the platform. Currently, the success of a song can be easily measured by their performance on the social network and new artists are discovered and brought to fame with just one viral song. An example of this is Gayle, an American singer who, despite having no prior relevance in the music scene, became globally known due to the success of her song “ABCDEFU” on TikTok.

Despite its success, TikTok is a platform that causes some controversy, especially in the United States of America. In 2020, when its number of users exploded, the U.S. government, then led by Donald Trump, expressed concerns about national security regarding the platform, as it was ByteDance, a Chinese private company. Although there is no evidence, and even TikTok does not operate in China, the American executive feared that the company was share data of your users with the Chinese government.

In August of that same year, the United States government issued an executive order that banned TikTok in the country, unless ByteDance sold control of the platform to a national company. This order would end up being suspended in October 2020, after a federal judge's block. At the time, the company had already agreed to sell a majority stake of TikTok to Oracle and Walmart.

Recently, earlier this year, the Biden administration rekindled the flame of this controversy, with the same demands as the previous government. This led the CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, had to give explanations about the social network before Congress of the United States. The ban of the platform on U.S. soil is unpopular among the population, as nearly half the country (approximately 150 million people) uses the social network and it has been an essential platform for promoting small businesses.