TikTok – The Biggest App You've Never Heard of?

Have you ever heard of TikTok? Well, I hadn’t either and yet the mobile app known as Doyin in China topped the app charts in many parts of the world last year. Having merged with musical.ly, another app popular with teenagers but obscure to the uninitiated, in August 2018, TikTok allows users to create 15-second videos of themselves, add effects and share them with their friends.

In July 2018, TikTok reached 500 million global active users according to ByteDance, the Chinese company behind it, beating other social platforms such as Snapchat by a wide margin without getting the same amount of attention. As the following chart, based on data from our partners Priori Data, shows, TikTok was particularly popular in India last year, where the app was downloaded nearly 120 million times. It racked up tens of millions of downloads in other countries as well, however, indicating that it is a global phenomenon worth taking note of.