# What’s the Deal with TikTok?

- Link: https://chatterblast.com/blog/whats-the-deal-with-tiktok/
- Published: 2019-02-27T19:25:53-05:00
- Author: chatterblastteam

Have you found yourself missing the good ol’ days of spending hours and hours watching
those pointless and hilarious 6-second clips on Vine? Well you’re in luck! Long 
gone are the days of reminiscing over “_Vines that keep me from ending it all_” 
on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOTOqVXE4Xg

Allow me introduce you to the newly redesigned **TikTok** (Formerly known as **Musical.
ly**).

## **What is TikTok?**

Let’s back it up for a second and tackle some quick and basic history on Musical.
ly – which would later become TikTok. Musical.ly was an app developed in Shanghai
by **Alex Zhu** and **Luyu Yang** in 2014. Originally, it was created to be an educational
app where users could share short, 3-4 minute videos educating other users on various
subjects.  After their first attempt failed produce a substantial audience, the 
creators decided to try and approach their app’s interface and functionality in 
a different way. Instead of focusing on educational videos, they rebranded as an
app focused on short music video clips allowing Musical.ly users – called “_musers_”–
to essentially lip-sync over these songs in creative ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3M2pxGi5mk

From the time of the launch in 2016 to the end of 2017, Musical.ly grew from 10 
million users to 90 million users primarily in the USA and Europe. Because of their
newfound audience, Musical.ly was eventually purchased by **Bytedance Technology**,
owner of TikTok. TikTok’s primary audience at the time was in Asia. Wanting to expand
their demographic, they purchased Musical.ly to obtain a larger audience in the 
USA. Once the app was acquired by Bytedance they decided to merge the two apps together
and keep the best features from each app to achieve the best format for its users.

## **How did TikTok blow up?**

In 2018, TikTok became the most downloaded app on the IOS networks app store surpassing
45.8 million downloads, up from YouTube’s 35.3 million and Instagram’s 31 million.
How did this happen? The answer is quite simple: people want quick and mindless 
entertainment that they can both consume as an audience and essentially have a stake
in by creating content themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFsHRy7yi_E

From the above clip you’ll notice that, like Vine that came before it, TikTok focuses
on a short-form self-produced video format.

Something unique about this particular platform is the trend of “short-format challenges”
that really helped it take off. Instead of focusing on skits and random clips as
popular Viners so often did, some of the most successful TikTok videos are challenges.
These can come in the form of music challenges, makeup challenges or sometimes well-
choreographed dances. Check out these examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aso3yLXjH4E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3c3WtQCUrY

## **Advantages of advertising on TikTok**

Since TikTok has proven itself to be a hot new social platform with a massive audience,
it was only a matter of time before brands got involved. But unlike places like 
Instagram, where brands so often rely on influencers to post aesthetically pleasing
imagery within brand guidelines, TikTok has given influencers the freedom to be 
more creative with their sponsored content.

With these two examples, you can see how influencers and brands have to think a 
little more outside of the box to showcase the product they are advertising. Because
of TikTok’s quick nature, these ads have to get right to it. Not so much subtley
as you might see on other platforms.

In example 1 you’ll notice that this #ad is more of a user interactive ad where 
Coca Cola – rather than contacting high-profile influencers – created a marketing
campaign that essentially centered around TikTok users creating videos _for_ them.
A brilliant take on the challenge trends I mentioned earlier.

As for example 2, you’ll see that there’s more of a scripted element that is more
so connected to a specific brand and a specific user.

While neither of these are really new forms of marketing, they do urge you to think
a bit more creatively about specific tactics and avenues for implementation.