TikTok keep stock! – 500 million users worldwide
By Natasja Beyleveld, Managing Director of NaMedia.
TikTok is a short-form video app, often referred to as a “lip-syncing” app, which makes it sound like it’s some online karaoke experience. This app is also better known for act-out memes backed up by music, which gets reproduced and remixed amongst users. This sounds like a digital drug party, but hey – we’re ever learning.
These 15 second video clips is most familiar to Generation Z, as is the gaming culture. Youtubers are already hunting for the next new thing. New-Thing-Whaaaat?
The keywords here are cute, funny, or clever. Whatever makes the audience curious and intrigued. “Yes, this is an internet joke” underlies much of the content. Users will post and share unapologetically wholesome content, and still receive less mocking than anywhere else on the web. Think about an audience of gummy bears listening to a gummy-bear-Adele-concert. Feeling too uncool to come up with a hashtag for this one. #GummyParty.
Twars (Twitter Wars) have become a bit too much for me lately, with some creepy comments surfacing on Facebook as well. It’s online bullying and a disregard for the right to individuality (up to where it’s legal of course). But TikTok provides an alternative means for sharing socially. It’s goofy, and perhaps a much needed ‘reset’. I forced myself not to spend more than 5 minutes watching, but shucks – it’s addictive. TikTok has made video editing incredibly simple.
They call it the Instagram for the mobile-video age. It’s a completely new subculture. It’s all about creativity. TikTok’s mission is “to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone. TikTok enables everyone to be a creator, and encourages users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos.” It’s more about entertainment than it is about lifestyle. Does this guide us into the future of marketing? For sure.
Given that TikTok has 500 million active users worldwide, we must pay attention. That makes TikTok 9th in terms of social network sites, ahead of better-known sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat. The app itself has been downloaded more than 1,5 billion times on the App Store and Google Play. If growth figures hold, this means the app is likely to be the third most popular non-gaming app, just behind WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It’s not owned by the Facebook group. Unlike our popular marketing platforms, 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24 (globalwebindex, 2019). TikTok creators might have understood the younger generation in a better way than competitor apps. Where specifically? Mostly India (45%), China (7%), and the USA (6%). TikTok is available in 155 countries in 75 languages hence extensive coverage of a large part of the population. They’ve been young-and-fast.
We know the future is video, and we know that it’s an entertainment-era; so perhaps it’s good to find the goofy in you again, and to communicate “unapologetically wholesome content”?
Love,
Natasja
