What is TikTok All About?

Parents know how difficult it is to get a teenager to focus on anything. So how much would it cost to grab the attention of the teenage population of the world? Right now, some $300 billion! At least this is TikTok’s current valuation, an app that is is all the rage among teens… but that many adults can’t begin to understand.

Understanding TikTok

Present in more than 150 countries and translated into 75 languages, TikTok was developed by the Chinese company Bytedance. Launched in September 2016, in little more than a year it had reached billions of downloads. It took Instagram eight years to achieve the same thing.

No limit 

But what is TikTok exactly? Technically, it is a social media platform where users can create and share very short videos, of fifteen seconds tops. Users can then string four videos together for a total of sixty seconds. Most videos consist of teens lip-syncing and performing to sections of popular songs. Another common type of content is sketches in which users show off their talent for comedy or filmmaking. Some film critics have even jokingly suggested that the Oscars introduce a new award for best TikTok video!

Videomemes

So what makes this app so special? First of all, TikTok is not just another social network for uploading videos and sharing them with friends. It’s an entertainment platform, a feature that sets it apart from social media apps focused on lifestyle, like Instagram. Its success is also due to the increasing popularity of ever-shorter videos rather than ‘old-fashioned’ photos or text. Memes are now short films.

Create and repeat

The app makes it extremely easy for users to shoot, edit and manipulate their own video content with little or no budget, upload sound effects or voiceovers, or simply lip-sync to other people’s videos, and share the hilarious results. There is no limit to what a teenager can do. And since the videos are so short and fast-paced, and they keep playing on a loop, it is also extremely easy to scroll to the next and keep on watching just one more… and then one more… and then… According to the company, its users spend an average of 52 minutes a day on it, and nine out of ten users are making videos or watching them several times a day.

TikTokers

The ultimate goal is not only to amass as many likes and followers as possible, but to have others replicate your routine –especially short choreographies or a challenge of some kind– and therefore making your TikTok video go viral and, eventually, becoming a celebrity. And like youtubers before them, a new type of job description is emerging that is banking on quick internet fame: professional ‘tiktokers’.

Teenagers are, of course, a very coveted consumer demographic. And global brands see TikTok as the most profitable and safest way to reach the so-called Generation Z, those born between 1995 and the mid 2010s, who are now starting to spend their parents’ money.

Success Chinese-style 

The TikTok phenomenon is the first case of a Chinese-born social network achieving worldwide popularity. This may seem irrelevant at first glance. However, it must be noted that Chinese digital culture is very different from those we are used to in the West. The Chinese government imposes strict controls over online information and sites its population can access, a degree of censorship that has been widely condemned. Currently the most popular international websites remain blocked in mainland China, including Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Meanwhile, TikTok has grabbed the attention of teenagers all over the globe.

A new audiovisual genre

Super short and always in vertical format, at their worst TikTok videos can be an endless scroll of nonsense or ego-tripping; an empty broadcast of audiovisual selfies. But when they are good, TikTok can be seen as a new type of media and a vehicle for the creativity of the younger generation. Those born in the digital age may have short attention spans but they also have wild imaginations, not only for entertainment and humour but also for activism and organisation. These are the most popular genres on TikTok:

• Lip syncs: at its origins the app was all about dancing and moving your lips to a snippet of a popular song. The creation and/or replication of a short but complex choreography is what’s trending right now.
• Pets: watching adorable puppies and kittens is always a source of online pleasure. Tiktok is no different.
• Challenges: from comedy to dance, from cooking to sports, there’s a challenge for everyone! Most are pretty absurd and harmless, like recreating album covers or doing push-ups, but take care because some of them can be dangerous.
• Memes: the internet is all about these hilarious visual jokes. On TikTok, they can be pretty sophisticated and make intelligent fun of a specific cultural aspect or social conflict.
• Cosplay: dressing up as a fictional character – especially from manga and anime, video games or TV shows – allows tiktokers to show their skills as costume designers and makeup artists.

CHARLI D’AMELIO

Charli D’Amelio is a social media sensation. After joining the video-sharing platform TikTok, the twenty-year-old dancer from Connecticut has attracted more than 150 million followers. She has already appeared in a Super Bowl commercial and has been interviewed by Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.

D’Amelio posts lip sync videos and vlogs, but it is her dance routines that are most popular. Her first-ever TikTok to go viral was a duet with a user called “move_with_joy”. In less than two hours the short video got 50,000 likes. D’Amelio’s most famous TikTok was her dancing to the song Lottery (Renegade) by the band K Camp. It provoked thousands of copycat videos. Later it was revealed that the choreographer was fourteen-year-old Jalaiah Harmon from Georgia, and the two danced together on D’Amelio’s TikTok.

D’Amelio is a great performer, but also thoughtful and down-to-earth. While she posts several TikToks a day, she continues her education and wants to be a professional dancer rather than a social media star. She encourages her followers to donate to charity, and her first meet-and-greet was a fundraiser. Online cyber-bullying is a major issue, D’Amelio says. That is why she teamed up with UNICEF earlier this year to help promote a safer internet.