Looking at what has made TikTok one of the most popular social media apps of 2020.
An educated personal take from the blog of Ryan Rickard as of October 2020.
TikTok is without a doubt the most trending social media application that is taking the world by storm. Believe it or not, user-created 15 second videos sound tracked by music clips are wildly popular. What makes TikTok a popular option for social media consumption is its ability to provide short-form entertainment, cater to variety, and track user interaction to provide seamless transitions between content. Here’s a look at some TikTok statistics, the pieces that put TikTok together, and the secret to 15-second success.
Statistics
According to a study published in the New York Times, as of March 2019 TikTok had passed 500 million users (Herrman, 2019). Now in 2020 this number has only risen as TikTok has began to reach a multi-generational user-base of both gen z and millennials along with many high-profile world-wide athletes and celebrities. Businessofapps.com has collected a multitude of statistics surrounding the rise of TikTok which includes that TikTok was downloaded 738 million times in 2019, average daily user time on TikTok is an estimated 45 minutes, and the TikTok one-week user retention rate sits around 26%. To put this information into perspective, in February 2019 the social network saw its largest jump in global app downloads by soaring from rank 269 to 4th and has remind in the top 20 downloaded apps since (Iqbal, 2020).
Short-Form Entertainment
Following the popularity of early short-form user video applications such as Vine and Music.ly, TikTok limits its users to similar grounds. While most content has around a 15 second runtime, TikTok allows users to create videos up to one minute in length maximum with no image or text-alone sharing options (tiktok.com). This is best described directly in TikTok’s business mission statement, “TikTok is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. Our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy” (tiktok.com/about). Paired with a multitude of free amateur video-editing tools such as color filtering, video length editing, video cropping, and sound substitution, the app has become extremely entertaining and, in some cases, addicting for its users with its fast pace.
One popular user taking advantage of the fast pace of TikTok is the user Zach King. King is a 30-year-old social media personality and active magician that uses the fast-pace video features of TikTok to perform technology based magic tricks (tiktok.com/@zachking). Most of King’s videos follow the 15-second success length and fit one or two magic tricks per video, making users want to quickly scroll and search for more of his tricks. Besides the aspect of TikTok video-editing, this magician succeeds over others because his videos fit the past-pace speed that users are looking for and his tricks don’t take time to set up and convince the audience. Zach King currently has 49.9 million followers; the third most on the social network (socialblade.com).
Catering to Variety
Another huge aspect of TikTok is the ability for users to create content about almost anything. Comedy, hobbies, fitness, travel, music, photography, and dance are all categories of content that have proven to be extremely popular throughout 2019 and 2020 (brandtastic.com). In late 2020 the application has seen content about educational, inspiration, and business also become extremely popular with famous entrepreneurs such as Gary Vaynerchuck and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson joining TikTok. These options for variety create a vast world for users to explore which could be a main factor to the addictiveness TikTok seems to carry.
When many TikTok users think of a content creator who is based around the idea of variety they think of David Dobrik. Dobrik started a vlog series on both Vine and YouTube back in 2015 before joining TikTok and quickly became popular for a wide-variety of random videos relating to a multitude of the content categories listed above (tiktok.com/@daviddobrik). Today many of Dobrik’s 22.8 million followers watch for his wide array of celebrity cameos spread throughout his content.
Tracking User Interaction
The third key to TikTok’s success with its users is through its ability to track user interaction. This idea of tracking every individual user has led to extreme controversy with many articles online reaching international attention. What TikTok does is follow which videos users interact with, which videos users don’t interact with, and how long users interact with videos (Leskin, 2020). It then takes this data and finds similarities between every bit of content the user has seen and makes inferences about what the user likes, dislikes, relates to, or doesn’t relate to, in order to provide the user with more content they would be interested in (Leskin, 2020). This could be a great thing for all parties as TikTok gains more usership while viewers receive more content they’re interested in and content creators gain followers. For example, thanks to this process, the NBA has collected more than 5.7 Million followers by sharing highlights of games and celebrity player cameos (brandtastic.com). Users found watching and interacting with the NBA’s highlights are likely to be shown more highlights in order to keep them on the application for longer periods of time.
A recently released Netflix documentary entitled The Social Dilemma shows the negative side of social media user tracking through sharing information and personal stories from employees of the social media platform, Facebook. While not the same application as TikTok, the documentary explains tools currently being used by social networks that are all very similar to one another. Netflix.com describes the film by stating “This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations”. A simple google search of the film will lead to many recently published articles of multiple viewpoints of the tracking systems used by TikTok that have made them so successful.
The Secret to 15-Second Success
The best three words to describe the content that reaches the most users on TikTok are: engaging, transparent, and trendsetting. Engaging content could include any content from the most popular categories listed above as well as content that encourages viewers to interact by commenting, liking, subscribing, or creating their own subsequent video. TikTok often encourages engagement more than other social media platforms through its “duet” feature which directly encourages content creators to interact with each other (Weir, 2020). Transparency is also extremely important to TikTok as amateur video content allows viewers to feel as if the content creators are “just another person” or “someone you would meet on the street”. Social media manager, Amy Jo Martin, discusses the importance of content creator transparency in her 2012 published book, Renegades Write the Rules. Martin details how working with popular athletes and celebrities (such as Shaquille O’Neil of the NBA) taught her that viewers enjoy seeing a more personal side of content creators. Lastly, trendsetting is also extremely important on TikTok as its fast 15-second video length pace keeps users constantly sliding through many videos during each use. On Socialblade.com’s list of the most followed TikTok accounts, more than 75% of the top 50 followed accounts are users that started or recreated dance, video editing, and sound trends.
Sometimes described as the “King of TikTok”, popular singer, songwriter, dancer, and social media personality, Jason Derulo, hits the secrets to 15-second success perfectly. Derulo uses the TikTok duet feature to not only interact with his celebrity friends using TikTok but also to interact with fans of his music and dance careers. Derulo has also set several worldwide trends based on his original songs and dance routines while staying transparent by inviting members of his family to participate in his videos. With 36 million followers, one of Jason Derulo’s most recent posts featuring his daughter eating lunch brought in 694.4 thousand heart reactions as well as over three thousand comments (tiktok.com/@jasonderulo).
References used in this blog post:
Daniel. (2020, August 06). What is Tik Tok Used For, And Why is it so Popular? Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://brandastic.com/blog/what-is-tiktok-and-why-is-it-so-popular/
Herrman, J. (2019, March 10). How TikTok Is Rewriting the World. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html
Iqbal, M. (2020, September 02). TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics (2020). Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tik-tok-statistics/
Leskin, P. (2020, August 07). Inside the rise of TikTok, the viral video-sharing app wildly popular with teens and loathed by the Trump administration. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-app-online-website-video-sharing-2019-7
Martin, A. J. (2012). Renegades write the rules: How the Digital Royalty use social media to innovate. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Orlowski, J. (2020, September 09). The Social Dilemma. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
Tik Tok. (2020). David Dobrik. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.tiktok.com/@daviddobrik?lang=en
TikTok. (2020). Zach King. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.tiktok.com/@zachking?source=h5_m
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Weir, M. (2020, June 11). How to duet on TikTok and record a video alongside someone else's. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-duet-on-tiktok
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