TikTok right on top

In 2014, the Chinese Musical.ly burst into the scene. With it you could create 15-60 second

music videos. You could lip sync those music videos, record them in slow motion, speed

them up or do a time lapse. There were special effects and filters. You could use hashtags and

browse through other Musical.ly users and create a community. When this sensation crossed

200 million users, ByteDance realized its potential and merged it into its social media video

app TikTok and the rest is history.

It became a sensation among Chinese teenagers and the youth of the world’s two largest

democracies–America and India–were hooked. 2020 should have been the Year of TikTok.

That’s when US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cracked

down on Chinese companies including TikTok. Instead of a rise, TikTok saw a great fall and

some analysts wrote it off altogether.

But what is it about the short video format in general and TikTok in particular, that caught the

fancy of the youth of the world? If today belongs to Facebook, then it seemed that tomorrow

would belong to TikTok. All the Silicon Valley giants thought they could fill the vacuum

created by TikTok’s fall. We had YouTube Shorts. Instagram Reels. This even as Facebook

tried to push short videos on its own.

But none of them could really replace TikTok as it rose from the ashes like a phoenix in

2021. While it did touch a billion users, that’s still way behind in the billion users club which

boasts of Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp (all Meta); Gmail and YouTube (both

Alphabet) and even the Chinese WeChat, which was also targeted by Trump.

But it’s a real achievement and disruption has come to light in the Cloudflare global traffic

rankings of 2021. TikTok has displaced Google Search which has held onto that crown for

goodness knows how long. From No. 7 in 2020, it is No. 1 in 2021. This has great

significance because this is the first time a Chinese company has beaten an American

company at the global level. Chinese giants dominate China and American giants the rest of

the world.

Here’s another fun fact. TikTok has been released as Douyin in China and that has also

crossed 500 million users. So TikTok-Douyin combo is right now Facebook’s biggest

challenger. It is the first cross border platform that has stormed the three largest populated

countries of the world: China, India and America. Are other Chinese giants watching and will

they want to adopt the TikTok strategy?

TikTok wasn’t the first product that was dismissed for being flippant and just a fad among teenagers. It definitely won’t be the last.