19 January, 2022
Demystified: 15 Surprising TikTok Facts and Stats
TikTok’s meteoric rise across the world had an interesting start. Launched in 2016 as Douyin, it has grown to become one of the most popular social apps. Learn about its (rather brief) history and why so many businesses are utilizing its unique features.
TikTok started as Douyin in 2016, owned by Chinese tech company Bytedance. It soon became popular across China. Founder Zhang Yiming had always wanted to expand Douyin overseas, so TikTok was launched for international markets in September 2017. It really took off worldwide in 2018 after merging with another Chinese social app, Musical.ly. The video-and-music combo proved popular and took the world by storm, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns.
Essentially, TikTok is the international version of Douyin, but with some key differences that will be explained below.
It may seem that there are new apps and trends becoming popular almost every day across the Internet, but TikTok deserves special attention. Some of the world’s leading brands now advertise their products and services on the platform (some of our favorite TikTok ad examples are here). If you aren’t already marketing on TikTok, read on to learn why it’s so lucrative.
Surprising TikTok Facts and Stats
To highlight exactly why it is so important in the advertising world today, we have compiled 15 of the most important TikTok facts and key TikTok stats.
1. TikTok Has More Than 1 Billion Active Users
TikTok is used by more than 1 billion users around the globe. Combined with Douyin, the user base is upwards of 1.5 billion. This is huge, because other apps, such as Instagram, took around six years to reach the billion-user mark. Similarly, it took Facebook four years to reach this figure.
TikTok did it in around three years and is still among the fastest-growing brands in the world.
2. It’s Been Downloaded More Than 3 Billion Times
The TikTok app was downloaded more than 2.6 billion times all over the world. This was reported by Sensor Tower in December 2020, so this figure has easily topped the 3 billion mark by now. In January 2021, the app was downloaded more than 62 million times. On top of that, during the first six months of 2021, TikTok was downloaded a whopping 383 million times!
