Usage Stats<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s begin our dive into understanding the prevalence of one of the\nmost popular apps on the market today by looking at some interesting facts\nassociated with the usage of TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. It took TikTok only 2.5 years to reach 500 million monthly users:\n<\/strong>TikTok, originally released as Douyin in China, was\nreleased in September of 2016. Within just 2.5 years, it managed to achieve the\ngoal of having 500 million active users. For reference, it took Instagram six\nyears to hit this milestone, while Facebook took a little over four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Variety)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. TikTok crossed 1 billion downloads in February 2019: <\/strong>Just nine months after hitting 500 million users, TikTok crashed the\n1 billion mark. This growth was mainly via South East Asian countries, like\nChina, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam. Snapchat took nearly 18 months to go\nfrom 500 million to 1 billion users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Sensor Tower)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. TikTok clocked 1.5 billion downloads in November 2019: <\/strong>The growing success of TikTok didn\u2019t stop with the 1 billion mark.\nThrough 2019, TikTok managed to attract a further 500 million users within just\nunder seven months, marking itself as the fastest-growing non-game app in\nhistory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Sensor Tower)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Douyin, TikTok\u2019s Chinese version and successor, reached 150\nmillion users within China in just two years: <\/strong>TikTok\nhad always been poised for success. Its predecessor and Chinese variant, Douyin,\nhad attracted 150 million users in China in just two years. While most apps\nwould consider the figure of 150 million to be a huge number globally, Douyin\nhad 150 million users in just one country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: technode.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. India is the biggest new market for TikTok, generating 45% of the\nnew installs in 2019: <\/strong>While initially TikTok\u2019s\nmassive growth rate was a result of China, Thailand, and Singapore rapidly\nadapting the app as their social platform of choice, the real massive spike in\n2019 came from India. Indian users accounted for nearly 45% of all the new\ndownloads in 2019, totaling around 477 million users. This figure is larger\nthan the new users in China, the USA, UK, South East Asia, and Russia combined!<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Economic Times)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. TikTok\u2019s home, China, containing the second biggest userbase\nafter India, generated only 7.4% of new users in 2019: <\/strong>China may have been where the seed of TikTok grew into the giant\nplant it is now, but the growth of the app has fallen massively in its homeland\nin 2019. China only managed to generate 7.4% of the new users in 2019, lagging\nfar behind India. This is still the second largest number of new users, which\nshould give you an idea of TikTok\u2019s popularity in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Economic Times)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. TikTok is the third most downloaded non-gaming app in the world: <\/strong>TikTok growth rate reflects in its download metrics over the various\napp stores online. It was the third most downloaded non-gaming app in the world,\nwith 614 million downloads in 2019. It lagged behind WhatsApp messenger, which\nhad 707.4 million unique downloads, and Facebook messenger, with 636.2 million\nunique downloads. The other two apps on the list are Facebook and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (As a side note, the fact that Facebook owns 4 of the top 5 most\ndownloaded apps in the world, combined with their pattern of getting data stolen, or misusing data,\nis a chilling notion.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can cross-reference\nthe Facebook data breach article<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Economic Times)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. 68% of the users indicated that they use the app only to view\nother users’ videos: <\/strong>Like most major video\nplatforms, a majority of TikTok users don’t create videos. Instead, they prefer\njust to watch what other users are uploading. Even though the creation of a\nwell-edited and effect layered video in TikTok is an easier prospect, 68% of\nthe users just watch the readily available content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Global Web Index)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 \u2013 24 years old: <\/strong>TikTok is widely popular among the youth of the world. Gen Y forms\nthe major userbase for this app, with as many as 41% of all users being in the\nage group of 16-24 years old. Keep in mind that most of these don’t actually\ncreate the videos on the platform; they just use it for entertainment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Global Web Index)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. The number of adult TikTok users in the USA has grown by almost\n5.5 times in less than 18 months: <\/strong>While it is true\nthat the majority of the TikTok userbase are teenagers, the adult userbase has\nbeen growing steadily. This spike was mainly due to Jimmy Fallon\u2019s ringing\nendorsement of the platform. In early 2018, Jimmy Fallon started issuing\nchallenges on TikTok, the first of which was the \u2018Tumbleweed\u2019 challenge. This\nled to the number of US adults using the platform exploded, rising by almost\n5.5 times in less than 18 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Marketing Charts)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. 55.6% of TikTok users are male: <\/strong>When\nit was released to western audiences, TikTok mainly drew the attention of\nteenage girls. Since then, the dramatic rise of popularity of the app has led\nto a mostly male userbase. As many as 55.6% of all users are male. This might\nsimply be due to the average male to female ratio in most countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: App Ape Lab)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 12. The average TikTok user activates the app more around 43 times a\nday: <\/strong>TikTok is a platform that is based around the\nconsumption of 15 \u2013 60 seconds long videos. Owing to this fact, most people\nopen the app multiple times in a day to get the best experience of the fresher\nuploads. This leads to an absurdly high activation index (as it\u2019s known in the\napp development world). The average TikTok user opens the app 43 times in a\nsingle day. If we take aa average of 16 hours awake time for a user, that comes\nup to nearly three times in a single hour! However, despite the extremely high\nactivation index, the average user spends only around 52 minutes on the app in\na day, coming to a usage time of 1 minute 12 seconds every time the app is\nopened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: App Ape Lab)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 13. Indian users spend 34 minutes on the app daily: <\/strong>As we saw, India represents a huge chunk of the TikTok user base.\nDespite this popularity, Indian users are among the least active users on the\nplatform. On average, an India user only spends around 34 minutes per day\naccessing TikTok. Compared to the global average of 52 minutes, this is very\nless. The activation index for Indian users is also marginally low than the\nglobal average, coming up to around 29.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Times of India)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 14. TikTok is used in all but six countries: <\/strong>TikTok originated in china but soon started to the entire world by\nstorm. As of 2019, there are only six countries in the world without a single\nTikTok user. These countries are mainly ones that are extremely dedicated to\ncensorship and control, like North Korea and Cuba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Apptrace)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 15. In less than a year since TikTok\u2019s release, 1 billion videos\nwere watched on the platform: <\/strong>TikTok\u2019s success is\nbased entirely around the ease with which its users can consume. This ease of\nconsumption has led to a huge number of videos being watched on the platform.\nIn just under a year, 1 billion videos were watched on TikTok, with an average\nof 1 million videos being watched daily even in December 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Tech Crunch)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 16. The most famous TikTok account was Lisa and Lena, who had more\nthan 32.2 million followers: <\/strong>TikTok has over 1\nbillion active accounts on the platform right now. Most of these accounts have\nunder ten followers. However, this was not the case with the German twins Lisa\nand Lena. At the height of their popularity, they had over 32.2 million\nfollowers on the platform, with over 2.1 billion likes on their videos. They\nrecently shut their account down and moved their content over to YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: TikTok)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 17.Lisa and Lena can\u2019t even come close to Chen He, Douyin\u2019s most\npopular content creator: <\/strong>While TikTok has a much\nlarger userbase than the exclusively Chinese Douyin, the Chinese actor Chen He\ncommands a much larger audience than Lisa and Lena. At the peak of his\npopularity, Chen He had over 50.7 million followers, with slightly over 3\nbillion likes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Douyin)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 18. TikTok has a very low engagement rate, only around 29%, compared\nto Facebook\u2019s 95%: <\/strong>Engagement rate for an\napplication is defined as the number of monthly users that open the app every\nsingle day. Facebook and Instagram have an engagement rate of 95% and 93%,\nrespectively, while TikTok\u2019s rate is a paltry 29%. This might be because of a\nwhole host of reasons. Some of these reasons may be Facebook\u2019 (and by extension\nInstagram) use as a way to keep in touch with friends, the availability of\ninstant news on the platforms, the heavy use of these platforms by influential\npeople, among others. TikTok is mainly used as an entertainment application,\nand hence does not compel its users to open it every single day, but only when\nthey feel the need for some quick and engaging content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Apptopia)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Social media platforms earn a lot of money. Facebook, the world\u2019s\nmost used social media platform, earns over $50 billion in revenue yearly.\nOwning to TikTok\u2019s massive rise in popularity recently, it his starting to\nbecome a lucrative target for marketers to exploit. Let\u2019s take a brief look at\nsome financial statistics associated with TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 19. User spending on TikTok exceeded $175 million on the App Store\nand Google Play: <\/strong>TikTok is monetized in multiple\nways. One of these ways is to allow users to donate to their favorite content\ncreators during live streams and allowing users to buy coins to purchase\nvarious things. This user spending represents only a small portion of the\nincome that is generated by the app. Even then, it is a sizable amount, with\nthe lifetime user spending on the app exceeding $175 million recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Sensor Tower)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 20. Chinese users account for 48.3% of all of TikTok\u2019s user-generated\nrevenue: <\/strong>The user-generated income comes mainly\nfrom the app\u2019s homeland. Chinese users have been using the app for two more\nyears than everyone else, and that might be one of the contributing\ncharacteristics of this statistic. Chinese users are still setting the trend\nwhen it comes to user (and coin) spending, generating 48.3% of all the\nnon-marketing revenue. It should be noted that this figure includes the Chinese\napp, Douyin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Sensor Tower)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 21. Bytedance, worth $75 billion, is the highest valued startup of 2019: <\/strong>Venture capital firms placed its value at $75 billion<\/a>, citing the far-reaching use of \u2018Tik-Tok\u2019 as one of the primary reasons for doing so. ByteDance beat out many other startups for this accolade. It was subsequently able to raise nearly $3 billion in investments, led by SoftBank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Wall Street Journal)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 22. ByteDance earned a little\nover $7 billion in the first half of 2019, more than their entire 2018 revenue:\n<\/strong>As we discussed earlier, 2019 was the year that\nTikTok truly exploded in popularity. ByteDance, prior to 2019, had not turned a\nprofit since its initial financing stage and managed to earn around $8 billion\nin 2018. This changed with TikTok meteoric rise in 2019, and according to the\nfinancial reports published by the company, they earned a reported $7.2 billion\nin the first half of 2019. This means that ByteDance might end 2019 with nearly\ntwice the revenue they generated last year, firmly placing them into the heavy\nhitters of the social media world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Business Insider)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 23. ByteDance purchased Musical.ly for $1 billion: <\/strong>Musical.ly was the western version of TikTok before TikTok ever\nbecame a thing. It allowed for users to create a 15 \u2013 60 seconds long video\nwhile being able to lip-sync along to a song playing in the background. When\nBytedance was looking to expand into the western market, Musical.ly\u2019s audience\nwas the first target to capture. Instead of trying to compete with them, they\nspent an exorbitant amount of money to purchase the app. After spending $1\nbillion, TikTok simply started with a huge jump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Business Insider)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Massive popularity comes with its own share of problems, and TikTok\nis no exception to this rule. In its relatively short lifespan of four years,\nTikTok has been faced with a ton of controversies. Here we take a look into\nsome of these controversies. It should be noted that ByteDance and its\nmoderators denied all the following controversial decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 24. TikTok trends have caused 35 deaths and ten serious injuries\nacross the world: <\/strong>With the introduction of any\ninternet trend, there will always be people who take them too far and end up\nhurting themselves. TikTok\u2019s users are no different. Since its worldwide release,\nthere have been at least 35 deaths reported that were associated with TikTok.\nMost of these recent cases have come from India. Unfortunately, not all of them\nwere caused due to TikTok\u2019s trends. There have been at least three cases of\nmurders being committed due to a TikTok video, eight cases of suicides being\ncaused by TikTok\u2019s audience, and the rest were accidents. These cases were one\nof the arguments levied against the app in its hearing in Madras Hight Court,\nwhich leads us to the next point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: tiktokdeath.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 25. TikTok was briefly banned in India by the Madras High Court: <\/strong>TikTok exploded in popularity in India in 2019. This was met with a\nlot of criticism from the older generations since they believed that the users,\nmainly the younger generation, were being exposed to unsavory content. There\nwere also questions being raised about the prevalence of sexual predators on\nthe platform looking to hurt children. All of these factors and more led the\nMadras High Court, in the state of Tamil Nadu, to ask Google and Apple to\nremove TikTok from their respective stores in July 2019. However, the people\nwho already had the app downloaded were allowed to keep using it until the\ncourt reached their final verdict. ByteDance agreed to remove nearly 6 million\nvideos that the Censor Board of India deemed inappropriate and also implemented\nmush harsher moderation policies, specifically for the Indian servers of the\napp. The ban was subsequently lifted in August of 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Verge)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 26. At least two dozen accounts on TikTok have been verified to\nbelong to ISIS: <\/strong>The Islamic State is notorious for\nlooking for ways to manipulate the impressionable youth into believing in their\nmandates. Their newest approach to the same is to release videos on TikTok\nshowing the life under the rule of ISIS. The videos are of farmers going about\ntheir day, talking about how the ISIS rule has brought peace to their lands and\nis overlaid with red and pink hearts. Since the origin of these accounts was\nrevealed, they were swiftly banned by TikTok. However, the Wall Street Journal\nspeculates that the accounts that were shut down only represented a smaller\nminority of the accounts in possession of the ISIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: The Wall Street Journal)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 27. TikTok suspended a girl for posting a video in support of Hong\nKong: <\/strong>The Hong Kong protests have rocked the entire\nworld and have put China\u2019s draconian censorship in the spotlight. While a lot\nof international brands bent to China\u2019s will in terms of their content, TikTok\noutright banned a user\u2019s account for publishing a video that supported Hong\nKong. This move was met with widespread criticism of the platform from across\nthe world, with users boycotting the platform in large numbers. The account was\nswiftly reinstated, and an official statement was released that stated that the\naccount ban had nothing to do with the protests. Exactly three people believed\nthis statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Business Insider)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 28. ByteDance was asked to endorse content praising the police and\ncondemning the protestors during the Hong Kong protests: <\/strong>Since ByteDance is based in Beijing, a communist regime, it is\ndirectly subject to government policies. The government, realizing TikTok and\nDouyin\u2019s large reach, asked the moderators to push content that supported the\npolice action to the front page. They also asked them to drive the rating of\nthe content supporting the protestors down, essentially creating a false sense\nof support for the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Australian Strategic Policy)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 29. According to internal leaks, moderators were asked to remove\ncontent criticizing China: <\/strong>According to a tip\nreceived by The Guardian, American and European moderators were asked to remove\nor heavily suppress all content that criticized China. They also wanted any\ncriticism about Chinese policies, like communism, constitutional monarchy,\nseparation of powers, etc., to be removed. This was apparently done in an\neffort to reduce international awareness about the issues surrounding China and\nits policies. Censoring content inside China is one thing but forcing\ninternational audiences not to critique their cruel policies is a massive abuse\nof power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: The Guardian)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 30. Moderators were asked to censor LGBTQ content in certain\ncountries: <\/strong>The LGBTQ community has always been\nheavily oppressed throughout the world. China is one of the places where this\ncommunity has absolutely no rights. So, on a platform that is based in Beijing,\nChina was right on the mark to start taking away the basic right of speech from\nthis community in other countries as well. Moderators were asked to outright\nremove any and all videos that depicted any LGBTQ content or even showed any\nsupport for the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: Business Insider)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 31. China asked moderators to censor videos with vaping and heavy\nkissing: <\/strong>Chinese society is notorious for its\ninsistence to cling to old traditions and societal norms. Moderators across the\nworld were asked to adhere to these norms when looking at videos for approval.\nSome of the things deemed \u2018inappropriate\u2019 were vaping and even \u2018heavy\u2019 kissing.\nHow the moderators were supposed to distinguish between \u2018normal\u2019 and \u2018heavy\u2019\nkissing is up for debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Source: The Washington Post)<\/p>\n\n\n\nTikTok goes the bank clock<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/hub.pfind.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/TikTok.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nControversy Galore<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Data Sources & References<\/h3>\n\n\n\n