Can you guess what is world’s most downloaded social media app this year?
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, maybe? Here at Unilife, we were surprised to find out that it is the micro-video platform –TikTok – that has hit the top spot so far in 2020, and since it was created back in 2017, the relatively new social media platform has clocked up more than 500 million users globally. If you’re still yet to discover TikTok, it’s basically a social media platform that allows users to create videos recorded in 15 seconds or less and share them across a community.
The rise of TikTok
TikTok was originally started in 2017 by the Chinese company - ByteDance. It quickly became a popular global platform for dance, especially amongst the under 25s, with tools that make it easy to film yourself dancing to music, integrate special effects and share the results. TikTok is no stranger to celebrity users showing off their dance skills, with global stars like Justin Bieber, Meghan Trainor and Jessica Alba regularly busting a move.
Since TikTok merged with popular lip-synching app Musical.ly, it has become the top outlet for anyone and everyone to express themselves through user-generated content, including singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing.
TikTok ‘challenges’ really took off during 2019, with a number of celebrity-led videos also going viral. One of the most popular in the UK was the “#BeautifulPeopleChallenge” launched by singer Ed Sheeran, that encouraged users to post videos of ordinary people spreading love and making the world a better place.Special raindrop filters, giving users the ability to control the rain saw the #RaindropChallenge as the most popular challenge of all last year, with 995 million people worldwide getting involved.
Lockdown’s favourite app
The TikTok phenomenon has taken a real upturn since the coronavirus outbreak. During the early stages of lockdown, its popularity soared with people looking for different, uplifting ways to spend their time online and indoors. Many of our Unilife students got really creative and we’ve viewed many of their brilliant videos on the app in recent weeks.
In March, TikTok launched a new live-streaming tutorial and demo series - #HouseofTikTok. Featuring a mix of creators and celebrities, the programme was designed to help keep people entertained as they spent more time at home. With 20 billion views of the hashtag, uptake has been massive. Just some of the famous talent involved includes Love Islanders -Eyal Booker and Montana Rose Brown and Pussycat Doll – Ashley Roberts.
Britain’s got TikTok talent
TV presenters, Ant & Dec teamed up with TikTok users Hollyh (16.7 million followers) and tessa.bear (5.8 million followers) to produce their first ever TikTok video - viewed by over 11 million people! Since then, the duo have created hilarious double act videos depicting #lockdownlife and crazy antics. The videos that they are making have been stitched together, as they are actually shooting their parts individually from the comfort of their respective homes.
On @antanddec, Ant makes Dec disappear, the pair play various sports and in their most recent video, they talk about using a face swapping app that enables them to picture how they would look as females – the final result is the two of them looking exactly like themselves but caked in makeup to resemble badly made up ladies. They now have 1.6M followers, 5.8 million likes and counting…
UK’s first TikTok house
As further evidence that TikTok is a real life serious craze right now, we read a recent news story about the UK’s first ever TikTok house. A group of 6 influential TikTok creators, with a combined following of 15 million followers, decided at the beginning of the year to leave their family homes and move in together for a few days to film a series of TikTok videos, with the goal of each one going viral. Lockdown happened, and so now they’ve been living together for months, making TikTok videos every day for 8 hours a day – it’s a full time job for each of them and they even have a manager living in the house. To view their 250 lockdown videos, liked by over 20 million people, search @ByteSquadHQ.
Learn new skills
Also trending on TikTok are ‘tutorials’ where thousands of users are videoing and posting ‘How to…’ content. The range of tutorials available is immense and some more ‘helpful’ than others! Content that is hashtagged ‘#tutorials’ has been viewed over 1 billion times! From make-up, hair, dancing and singing lessons to how to make the perfect pancake or how to customise your Converse!
Five TikTok tips
Finally, there are thousands of TikTok tutorials about TikTok itself. If you’re new to TikTok or want to increase your following, try to remember these 5 golden rules so that you always make great videos and your content trends.
- The first 5 seconds of your video is vital – make it obvious what the video is about at the outset.
- TikTok works on algorithms, so if people watch for the full viewing time and are repeatedly watching, your content will do well.
- Make your video sharable – it goes without saying that more people will see it this way.
- Likes and comments count – also ask people to tag you and ask them to use the hashtags that you’re using.
- Be unique – there are so many different types of videos out there but try and think of a unique twist to make yours really stand out – you never know, yours could beat the top views record of 962.9 million by user @zachking.
Good luck!
