In 2021, Tik Tok passed the milestone of 1 billion active users on its platform and 3 billion downloads. The social network created in 2016 is now the global phenomenon. Appealing to the younger generation at the base, the video network is conquering other terrains and is on its way to becoming the number 1 platform. In France, Tik Tok joined the list of the 50 most visited sites in September 2021.
Driven by confinements around the world, the mobile application is now the most downloaded, and this for several months in a row.
The Tik Tok Mania is just beginning: discover all the key figures and statistics to decipher TikTok and anticipate tomorrow’s trends.
What is Tik Tok, the social network sensation?
History of Tik Tok
Do you know Musical.ly, the ancestor of TikTok? This unique app was founded in China, specifically in Shanghai in 2014 by entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, two long-time friends. The company is called Musical.ly Inc.
The story goes that the basic concept of the app was related to learning and education, specifically to translate song lyrics into sign language, according to Musical.ly’s Wikipedia page.
The use of the application quickly shifted to dancing and singing content: users filmed themselves either to participate in choreographies that went viral, or to create short “karaoke” or “lipsync” videos on movie lyrics, comedians or music.
In 2015, the app was launched in the United States and very quickly, users showed a real craze, especially in terms of longer usage time than on other platforms by teenagers.
2016 marks the birth of a new application, Douyin, in China, created by the Chinese company Bytedance. One year after its creation, this social network has 100 million users and expands internationally in 2017 under the name TikTok, but still remains known as Douyin in China.
In November 2017, Bytedance buys Musical.ly with an estimated $1 billion but we don’t know the exact figure of this transaction.
The use of TikTok is not the same as other networks. The collaborative and instantaneous side as well as the different challenges has quickly seduced the world.
During the year 2020 and following the various global confinements, the application is experiencing unprecedented growth. The Guardian highlighted that this meteoric growth has been driven by the arrival of influencers from other platforms and celebrities on TikTok, motivating users to sign up and follow them.
How does Tik Tok work?
The Tik Tok social network is based on the sharing of short videos. If, at the beginning, the authorized content was not to exceed a few seconds, it is now possible to share videos of 3 minutes maximum.
Initially, choreography, songs and jokes were popular content, if not the only really successful ones on the platform.
Then, in 2019, the first popular tiktokeers started to appear, offering new content. Brands also started on the platform, understanding the challenges of the app.
Tik Tok financial results
According to Business of Apps’ TikTok Report 2021, here are the app’s revenues:
2017: $63 million
2018: $150 million (+138%)
2019: $350 million (+133.3%)
2020: $1.9 billion (+442.9%)
In terms of growth, Tik Tok generated a 138% increase in revenue between 2017 and 2018, 133% between 2018 and 2019.
But the boom was created between the year 2019 and 2020: +442% for the Chinese application, an international explosion that is just beginning at this key moment.
Tik Tok : key figures 2021
1 billion active users in 2021 on Tik Tok
History: in the third quarter of 2021, Tik Tok has crossed the billion user mark worldwide.
This meteoric rise, however, required a few steps before exploding its record.
As App Annie reports, at the beginning of 2018, the app was still in the early stages of its journey and did not have 200 million active users. It took until the third quarter of the same year to finally reach that milestone.
Thus, between the year 2018 and the year 2021, the evolution of the number of subscribers was +400% in 3 years, a feat never before achieved in the universe of social networks.
To go further, Statista gives us the ranking of the actions preferred by Internet users in August 2021.
In first place is the number of videos viewed by Tik Tok users, at 167 million per minute, ahead of the number of views received by Facebook Live (44 million per minute) and the number of messages sent by iMessage, the iOS messaging service (12 million per minute).
78% of users are between 11 and 24 years old
But this trend is changing! Indeed, if the age of TikTok users was initially rather low, with a target mainly teenagers, the application is in a phase of mutation and seduces more and more the higher age groups.
TikTok audiences in the world
According to the TikTok report from Business of Apps, which uses data from App Ape, global audiences are broken down as follows in 2021:
Under 18: 28
19-29 years old: 35% of the global audience
30-39 year olds: 18
Over 39 years old: 19%.
Thus, we can see that audiences are diversifying, in favor of “older” people. As an example, let’s take a closer look at the statistics in the United States in 2021, given by Statista.
Although the 10-19 age group is largely represented with 25% of the audience, the next three age groups are in balance with each other with just over 20% share for the 20-29, 30-39 and 40-49 age groups. Only the over 50s of the population are below, with 11% share. The US has the second highest share of global users, just behind India, with 16% of the total number of global users, which sets the tempo for age movements within the platform.
Moreover, the Tik Tok population exploded in 2021 worldwide with a 38% increase compared to 2020, as Statista shows us.
