The growth of TikTok seems unstoppable. The Chinese social network for video sharing has become the most downloaded in the world , surpassing historical giants of social networks such as Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.
The data comes from a global survey conducted by Nikkei. According to the Asian media, and for the first time since 2018, the year in which its study of social networks began, TikTok is positioned as the leading application in global downloads in 2020 .
Precisely, its popularity in recent years has not stopped growing. After going international in 2017 (previously it was only available in China), TikTok began to gain the interest of young people.
With TikTok at the helm, the global ranking of the most downloaded social networks was completed with Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, the latter four under the orbit of the American Mark Zuckerberg.
Curiously, the Asian list (which excludes China) shows the North American Facebook as the most downloaded application of 2020. And, similar to what happens globally, it is followed by TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
2020 2019 Application 14TikTok22Facebook33WhatsApp 45Instagram51Facebook MessengerSource: Nikkei
The growth factors of TikTok
TikTok did not have it all easy in 2020. In the last stretch of his tenure, Donald Trump demanded that the company divest itself of its local operations in favor of a North American buyer. Or that it was forbidden. However, despite the pressures, the social network exploded during the pandemic.
Nikkei points out that in times of coronavirus, TikTok not only dominated the US market, but also part of Europe and Latin America . Later, with the election of Joe Biden, the veto imposed by Trump was ended, although it continued to be investigated.
Finally, according to analyst Chuzen Kin, Marketing Manager of App Annie, part of the success of TikTok is due to the fact that the time of use of the application is greater than YouTube in the United States and the United Kingdom.
This may be because TikTok traps users. On the one hand with its interface that shows one video after another and on the other hand with its advanced recommendation algorithm that is increasingly sophisticated.
Along with the popularity of the Asian social network, the term tiktoker emerged, destined to name the creators of TikTok content. Instagram and YouTube already had theirs, which were instagramer and youtuber, respectively.
