TikTok is Quickly Becoming a Major Threat to Facebook
Short-form video service TikTok claims to “inspire creativity and bring joy”. It is developed with the aim to motivate young people to positively impact the world. Mostly TikTok is known for its lip-syncs, funny videos, and flash mobs.
TikTok managed to make something unbelievable – create a totally new niche on the market that already was occupied by Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and other popular entertainment social networks. The app became a “safe place” for teenagers where they can have fun without adult supervision. No toxicity – only positive content such as dances, jokes, and songs.
The app firmly held the leading position among the most downloaded mobile applications in 2019. Sensor Tower reports that by popularity, TikTok occupies the first place in the Apple Store and the third in Google Play where it is overtaken only by WhatsApp and Messenger. The app left behind such favorites as Facebook and Instagram. And it`s important to note that among all the mentioned apps TikTok is the only app not owned by Facebook. The social media giant has a lot to contemplate about this threat.
Let us turn to numbers: by November 2019, TikTok was downloaded more than 1.5 billion times. It is available in 141 countries, has over 500 millions active users worldwide and 90 percent of them access the app daily. The interesting fact is that the growth of TikTok was mainly driven by users in India, who make 31% of the app’s new audience. 43% of TikTok users belong to the youth category (16-24 y.o.), which is more than Facebook that tries hard to lure young audience to their apps.
Among these, the main TikTok’s competitor is Instagram, currently outstripped by roughly 230 million downloads.
These figures speak for themselves. TikTok is gaining more and more admirers. Besides, it became a great platform for brands to make sponsored videos in cooperation with creators.
Anyway, Facebook already tries to imitate the TikTok’s functionality both as a separate app (Lasso) and a part of Instagram (Reels). Nevertheless, neither attracts as much interest as TikTok did.
To sum up, TikTok is growing extremely fast and by all accounts is a close competition to usual social media such as Facebook and Instagram. Are you ready for such changes or do you prefer to stick to already traditional apps?
