Social networks have long been an integral part of every person’s life.
However, if Facebook and Instagram have been around for several decades, then Chinese TikTok thundered all over the world only in 2019.
Tik Tok – What is it?
Tik Tok is a social network and video hosting (like Youtube) in one bottle.
It is a service, the functionality of which allows you to record and publish music videos, broadcast live and exchange messages. Basically, it’s a kind of mix of Vine, Instagram Stories and Snapchat.
What users can do in Tik Tok:
shoot 15-second videos: clips, sketches, reactions and other kinds of videos popular with young people;
edit them: speed up, slow down, add filters, add music and more;
share videos and watch other people’s videos;
launch live broadcasts (streams);
chat with friends, etc.
Along with the emergence of a new social network in the Internet masses, the term “tiktokers” is increasingly heard – who are they? The answer is simple: these are TikTok users who post their videos on this site.
However, this word very soon claims to become a household name and mean young people (mostly minors) who grimace at the camera, sing to the soundtrack, make fun and at the same time record their pampering on video.
The History of Tik Tok: How it all Began
Despite the Chinese roots of the Tik Tok app, China did not immediately learn about it. Initially (back in 2016) this service with similar functionality was called “Douyin”, but over time its developers decided to enter the international market.
Due to censorship restrictions in China, they had to literally create a duplicate of their brainchild, which became the so popular Tik Tok, running on separate servers and aimed at the American audience, and soon the whole world.
Who is the creator of Tik Tok?
When getting acquainted with the social network TikTok, what it is and what is its essence, one cannot but say a few words about the creators of the popular video platform.
They were the Chinese developer company ByteDance, which was founded back in 2012 in China and which to this day is engaged in the release of a wide variety of mobile applications.
Oddly enough, but the super popular TikTok project is not the most successful startup of Chinese guys. The main product of ByteDance is the Toutiao news feed aggregator.
Its audience is over 120 million people a day, and at the end of 2019 it acquired the title of the most expensive startup in the world.
What is the Secret of Success?
ByteDance breaks stereotypes, and unlike many other successful start-up creators, it refuses the influential patronage of large Chinese holdings (what is this?).
On the contrary, it challenges everyone, enticing developers even from leading IT companies, offering them salaries 50% higher than market salaries. Perhaps thanks to this, almost every project of theirs becomes so popular.
Many people do not understand why, among all such services, TikTok is considered the best, what kind of application it is and why all trends begin there.
As for the secret of the success of Chinese video hosting, there are actually several quite objective reasons:
The emergence of their own stars and the attraction of well-known celebrities.
Some of the social network users collected millions of views, which soon attracted the attention of American singers, actors and other public figures who joined the trend (how about?) and also began to shoot their videos.
As the world began to learn about Tik Tok, what it is and what is the highlight of this service, it also had large advertisers who began to invest huge budgets to place their ads on this platform, and with a lot of money came worldwide fame. …
The closure of the social network Vine.
This contributed to the fact that the TikTok app took its niche and intercepted the audience. In addition, some statistics show that it took a large share of Instagram Stories as well.
“Absorption” in 2017 of the increasingly popular karaoke application musical.ly.
It is believed that it was a pretty serious competitor for TikTok. In it, it was also possible to shoot 15-second clips with a phonogram, do “duets”, answer questions, etc. As this application spread in the world, it began to be in demand not only among ordinary teenagers, but also among idol stars of these very teenagers.
Advertisers soon followed suit, and then musical.ly partnered with Apple Music itself, which licensed most of the popular songs. Although ByteDance originally planned to continue the development of musical.ly as a standalone project, shortly after the purchase, it was decided to unify all users and functionality of the application within TikTok.
In the CIS countries, they found out what kind of application it was and how to use it, mainly thanks to advertising that was actively promoted on the Internet.
In addition, a lot of memes appeared on social networks (what’s that?) On this topic, and then, in fact, there was a surge in popularity among the Russian-speaking audience.
Which is Better – Like or Tik Tok
Likee video editor has certain similarities with Tik Tok, but it cannot be called a plagiarism of this application.
Although it came out much later, right at the moment when ByteDance was already resting on its laurels of global fame in 2018, the newcomer to the market had its own characteristics, thanks to which it honestly earned the love of its audience.
Of the similarities between both of these services, the following can be distinguished:
It is a convenient and intuitive video graphics editor.
With their help, it is possible to shoot short videos.
Users can create video sequences with music and pictures from their smartphones.
Synchronization with musical hits is available.
No copyright for published videos.
You can apply stickers and masks, as well as use various special effects.
The popularity of a video depends on the number of tiktok followers and likes delivered.
Both apps are supported on Android, iOS and Windows operating systems.
There are ads and paid features.
It is impossible to get likes or followers.
What is better like Likes or Tik Tok if they are so similar? It’s up to you to decide, but unlike Chinese video hosting, Likee has a number of certain “chips”.
The first is the amount of memory used by the application. Like “weighs” much less – 150 MB in comparison with 430 MB TikTok.
The second is the interface. Perhaps this is a personal matter for each user, but Likee is more advanced, especially due to such effects as “4D visualization” and the so-called “Super power”.
At the same time, Like significantly loses to TikTok in terms of video quality. It does not allow you to shoot them in high definition.
In addition, the brainchild of ByteDance has acquired a small addition: with its help, users can create live images, like wallpapers for smartphones and tablets. Like cannot boast of such an option.
Thus, we can safely say that TikTok is an excellent application for professional bloggers who strive for high quality videos.
Likee is a video editor for amateur recordings with more functionality and a more interesting interface that undemanding teenagers will definitely like.
How to use the TikTok application
It’s pretty simple.
First, you need to download the application from the App Store or Google Play on your smartphone.
After that, you can proceed to registration, but remember about the age restrictions. Only users 13+ can create an account. You can register in one of two ways:
Enter your mobile phone number and / or email, as well as come up with a password that you will then use when logging in from new devices.
Log in through the account of the social networks you already use: Facebook or Google.
Immediately after registration, the user will be shown a feed of popular videos, taking into account trends and current geolocation. Subsequently, you will be given recommendations based on your personal interests and preferences (depending on what you have watched before).
If you do not plan to become a famous TikTok blogger and want to remain exclusively in the role of a viewer and commentator, you can make your account private using the privacy settings.
Conclusion
Tik Tok Is a social network that takes place in our world, and a fashion trend that may well come to naught in a few years.
However, today this is one of the most popular applications on the Internet, which can be treated in different ways, but which will definitely not leave you indifferent.
