The monthly active user of YouTube is 891 million. To achieve this milestone, YouTube has taken 17 years. In contrast, the monthly active user of TikTok is 1.2 billion, and they have taken only five years to achieve this milestone. From 2018 to July 2020, the global user base increased by around 1157%. Only in America has it increased by around 787%. Isn’t it unbelievable?
Nowadays, India has the most audience in social media around the world. And Tiktok has downloaded 610 million in India. But the funny fact is that TikTok is banned in India. That’s why TikTok can’t grow differently than expected. According to a report, TikTok is the most engaging app among all the social media apps. Its average session length is 10.85 minutes. Again average users spend 52 minutes a day in TikTok. Moreover, there are 4.8 billion people worldwide, and one in four is a TikTok user.
RevenueEarned by TikTok
In 2021, the revenue that TikTok earned was around 4.6 billion dollars, which is more than 42% than last year. To earn this amount of money, TikTok has taken five years. Whereas in 5 years, Facebook earned only 777 million dollars. Though at that time, the internet user was much less.
Working Algorithm of TikTok
At first, TikTok brings the content with the most likes and shares of different categories. And simultaneously understand the preference of the audience. They filter or refind the contents according to the audience preference and show them to the audience interface. But sometimes, they send videos with fewer likes, views, shares and other metrics to understand the audience’s interest. As Someone is interested in Mobile Photography and despite fewer views or likes, he will watch the video.
When Someone uploads a video on TikTok, 70% of views come from recommendations. At the same time, 90 to 95% of views come from a recommendation in TikTok.
The algorithm is the primary weapon of this social media. Even from YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, TikTok has the most powerful algorithm.
TikTok always shows you some videos one by one without any option, like YouTube. And our natural tendency while using social media is scrolling. TikTok is arranged so that the audience can scroll quickly, one after one. And the audience is scrolling the videos, engaging with videos. Some videos are skipped, some are paused, or some are watched repeatedly. What kind of videos audience is watching or engaging in? According to that, the algorithm finds the following videos for the audience.
Algorithm unit
In Beijing, an engineering team of TikTok released documents named “TikTok Algo 1O1“. In this algorithm, there are four purposes of this algorithm.
- User value
- Long-term user value
- Creator value
- Platform value
This document also states that the company’s ultimate goal is to increase the daily active users. But they prioritise two matrices.
- Retention
- Time spend.
The founder of Algo Transparency, Guillaume Chaslot, states, “Watch time is most important. The primary purpose of the algorithm is not to show what the audience demand but instead to hook the audience on this platform.
The strategy of TikTok
TikTok always maintains a basic and straightforward strategy. They have given all types of tool access to the user. So that user doesn’t fall into any difficulties. They can edit totally in this app using different filters and other tools.
Response videos of TikTok are much more popular, which is called Duet. In which the audience can collaborate with other videos easily. Again Hashtag videos play a vital role in TikTok. The audience can participate in challenge videos, dance or funny jokes Using these hashtags.
Moreover, followers in TikTok only matter a little. If the algorithm likes your video, it boosts or promotes it automatically.
Geo-Targeting of TikTok
Primarily no one can perform better in Geo Targeting than TikTok. The algorithm will show them videos from whatever country or location the audience is in. For hooked the audience, TikTok uses another method, loop. That means TikTok will play the same videos several times until the audience scrolls down.
Is TikTok selling its data to the Chinese Government?
American Government filed this type of allegation. According to Toronto-based Cyber Security organisation, ‘The Citizen Lab’, TikTok only collect audience usable device, Network Address, Hardware Model name and this type of related information. The user’s device information is necessary for tracking the audience. According to their report, they didn’t find any evidence that they recorded the user’s audio and video without their permission.
