Who Made TikTok Wildly Popular: The Billionaire Who Rebranded A Chinese App
TikTok popularity:
The popularity of the video-sharing platform, TikTok, has already reached an iconic app status. Users from all over the world are signing up in droves, and creating short videos paired with custom audio or trending music. Despite the app's massive success, the man behind TikTok is seldom mentioned and appears to live a relatively private life.
The CEO of ByteDance is Zhang Yiming, and Zhang’s history of working with startups helped to create the most successful startup in the world. It is worth mentioning that TikTok had a recent change of leadership when ex-Disney executive, Kevin Mayer, took over as CEO, and the new leadership is evidence of TikTok's international ambitions. Although this is not an app that needs much help, considering it has already been downloaded over two billion times. One of the reasons for the app's success is its appeal to a younger audience that likes to compete in various challenges, on top of performing in front of a camera. The impact of the app has even affected the music industry with new stars emerging based on their musical talents being showcased in the app. Despite all of this, TikTok’s relationship with China has continually made some nervous.
Companies like Facebook, can be used as a comparison to TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is the head of the company, and Facebook has successfully acquired several different apps to help expand the company’s brand, reach, and users. The path to ByteDance’s success and TikTok’s international reach is similar. While social apps use a variety of technologies, AI technology and algorithms have specifically helped to set TikTok apart. Despite the comparison to Facebook, the billionaire behind ByteDance is not like Zuckerberg as a person. Instead, the mysterious CEO of ByteDance has a unique business philosophy and tends to remain behind the scene more often.
TikTok's China Origins Explained
In 2016, and as the company continued to grow, ByteDance released the Chinese version of TikTok, known as Douyin. Compared to TikTok, Douyin users are slightly older, and the app offers different features that allow people to perform in-app purchases. Despite the limited release, Douyin gained over 100 million users within one year and as reported by TechCrunch, it was recently estimated that the China-exclusive app boasts 400 million daily active users.
The international version of Douyin, TikTok, was officially launched in 2017, and can attribute a lot of its success to ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly, a Chinese app that let users lip-sync to their favorite songs. To highlight just how important many viewed Musical.ly, Facebook even attempted to buy it, as reported by BuzzFeed. However, with ByteDance purchasing the lip-syncing app instead, it gave the Chinese company a foothold to work with outside of China.
After the acquisition of Musical.ly, ByteDance was able to retool TikTok by merging it with the lip-syncing app in 2018. This version connected with the younger audience that Musical.ly had already attracted, while also utilizing the gained knowledge on the best method to share different stories and videos. Essentially, TikTok’s design was not a fluke, and when Vine ended, there was an established market with people looking for a platform just like this.