How TikTok Become Popular & How TikTok Grow: Using an Algorithm That’s Ingenious

Last Updated on 2023-03-26 , 12:06 pm

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with TikTok, here’s one sentence to describe it: TikTok is a platform with mostly silly and meaningless short videos that are somehow addictive.

Since the short videos are so meaningless, some of you might wonder, why would people want to waste their time watching such videos for hours?

Well, it’s because TikTok has a secret you might not know about and we’re here to reveal it.

If you prefer to watch a video about this topic instead, here’s a video we’ve done, and watch till the end for a surprise:

What is TikTok?

TikTok is a very simple app that lets you watch user-generated short videos that’s up to 60 seconds long, though most videos are less than 15 seconds.

The moment you launched the app, the videos will play immediately, making it super user-friendly.

Some people use TikTok to create videos and these people are called Tiktokers.

So, you can think of TikTok as the defunct Vine, a similar app that made Logan Paul and Jake Paul popular.

In the past, most people used it to lip-sync songs or voices for fun, while others simply danced with the music.

But nowadays, we’re seeing more comedic skits and other informative “hacks”.

Currently, the platform is used primarily by Gen Z people, basically people born after 1996.

Origins of TikTok

Back in 2011, a young entrepreneur in China, Zhang Yiming, started Bytedance, a company that uses AI for content.

The company also launched an article-writing AI bot that’s so smart, the AI can write an article by itself in two seconds.

Looks like I’ll be replaced by a robot soon. Oh, wait, I’m not. You think this article is written by a human?

The company also started Douyin in 2016, the China version of TikTok.

In September 2017, Bytedance released TikTok, the international version of Douyin.

According to TikTok, the servers are located differently so TikTok won’t face the Great Wall of China and shouldn’t have any privacy issue.

Musical.ly to TikTok

In 2017, the moment TikTok was created, it bought over Musical.ly, an established app with over 200 million users.

It works just like TikTok and by August 2018 users of Musical.ly were all successfully transferred over to TikTok.

All in all, in about two years, TikTok has amassed 800 million monthly active users. A number that Instagram took seven years to reach.

Of course, Facebook being Facebook, they created an app that’s very similar to TikTok, called Lasso. That app failed miserably. It was allegedly only downloaded around 70,000 times.

Even the Goody Feed App has more downloads than that.

How TikTok Become Popular & How TikTok Grow

Remember earlier where I mentioned Bytedance’s expertise was in AI?

They’re so serious about it, that they have a research arm that focuses solely on AI. Additionally, all of their products are powered by AI.

The company has a product called Toutiao (headline), which uses AI to determine what you like to read and feed you with the content.

And TikTok works the same way.

Although other social media platforms are also using AI, TikTok’s version seems to be the best, and we can only speculate that shorter contents help the AI to find out what you like faster.

The moment you launch the app, you’ll realise, the first video shown isn’t from the TikTokers that you’ve followed but by its recommendations.

Within half an hour of scrolling mindlessly through the app, you’d realise the AI now knows what you like.

But TikTok has one more trick up its sleeve.

TikTok Watermarks

TikTok has many other features that make it interesting, like an easy-to-use video editing platform, crazily cute filters and an array of music for you to use.

These features are also available on other platform but there’s also something TikTok does that no other platforms have done. Watermarks.

All their videos are watermarked. So even if you download a video to repurpose it for other platforms, the watermark will stay on the video, so more people will know about the app.

Technically, you can use a third-party app to edit and download the video without a watermark.

But come on, how many of these 800 million monthly active users will take the extra effort to do that?

That’s probably the reason how some of us know about Douyin back in the days.

With that, that is how TikTok integrate itself into your life.

Like my mother always said, “Don’t keep staring at your phone. Even if you want to stare, stare at Goody Feed’s TikTok!”

Reader Bao: Your mother definitely did not say the last part.

Oops.