In 2020, marked by great changes and atypical situations it was interesting to observe the popularization of the social network Tik Tok founded in 2017 in China. The main advantage of this application is its ease of use. It is extremely easy to create, share and follow content on Tik Tok, firmly confirmed by its numerous users who are under 15 years old. An extremely important reason for Tik Tok’s popularity last year is the global pandemic and the accompanying lockdown in many countries of the world: Tik Tok has become a source of entertainment for people who were not allowed to leave their homes.
Fastest growing social network
Last year, Tik Tok took first place in the total number of downloads, according to the source of App Annie’s 2020 mobile app report, thus having become the fastest growing social network. There are three main ranking lists, one of them representing the total amount of application downloads, followed by the list of total user consumption and the third one representing the degree of monthly use.
In terms of overall number of downloads, along with Tik Tok, Facebook and WhatsApp, Zoom took an important fourth place in the ranking, while Google Meet took the seventh. The increase in downloads of Zoom and Google Meets applications is logical, given the pandemic and the need for communication, work, and education from home.
As for the second scale, which represents the level of consumption of users, the first place is occupied by Tinder, followed by Tik Tok. Since the Tik Tok application is extremely suitable for monetization, efforts are being put to integrate the eCommerce tool into the application, thus exploiting the full earning potential through the application.
In the context of monthly usage, Tik Tok ranks only eighth, after Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Amazon, Twitter and Netflix. The top four used apps on a monthly basis are owned by Facebook, which best demonstrates the social monopoly of this powerful social network.
The popularity of Tik Tok
It is important to emphasize that the popularity of Tik Tok is due to the fact that the content created on Tik Tok can be shared on other social networks thus increasing the chances of user review and dissemination of the content itself. It also differs from Instagram and Facebook in that it informs users about the time of use, so after two hours there is a warning about excessive use of the application.
Despite the rapid growth in Tik Tok’s popularity, this new social network still lacks serious competition to Zuckerberg’s empire consisting of Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, largely because it is not possible to advertise on Tik Tok, but one never knows what the future holds. Since Tik Tok users are teenagers and adolescents, it is wise to choose Tik Tok as a platform to communicate and spread messages to these groups. Branding through Tik Tok is extremely effective if aimed at a younger population.
