Despite competition and getting mired in political spats, TikTok shows no signs of slowing down: It has now surpassed 1 billion monthly active users, the company announced today.
“More than 1 billion people around the world now come to TikTok every month to be entertained as they learn, laugh, or discover something new,” the TikTok team wrote in a blog post thanking its user base. A TikTok spokesperson added the count doesn't include Douyin, the Chinese version of the app.
Breaking the one-billion user milestone underscores that TikTok has become one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet, even though the app itself was only created four years ago. Earlier this month, research firm App Annie also found that users in the US and the UK are spending more time on TikTok than on rival platform YouTube. (However, YouTube still has more monthly users overall at over 2 billion.)
Through TikTok, you can view a never-ending carousel of short, entertaining videos, which will eventually adapt to your preferences. Users themselves can also share videos and build up a following. The approach has made TikTok particularly popular among teens and college students, which prompted Instagram and YouTube to create copycat versions of TikTok.
TikTok’s success is also noteworthy because the app comes from Chinese company ByteDance. Historically, Chinese tech firms have struggled to break into the US market, but ByteDance has proven to be the exception. However, TikTok’s ties to China have also attracted unwanted scrutiny. Last year, the Trump administration claimed TikTok posed a national security threat over concerns the Chinese government might use the app to secretly spy on Americans.
TikTok denied it posed a spying threat. Nevertheless, former President Trump tried to cripple the app's access to the US market. Still, surveys showed that most Americans didn’t care about TikTok's ties to China.
The incoming Biden administration later rescinded Trump’s attempts to ban TikTok from the US, although the White House is still reviewing the risks of foreign-controlled mobile apps transferring data to US adversaries.