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Basically, there are two types of people. Those who have heard about TikTok, and those who are going crazy about it.
Oh wait, there’s a third one. Those who hate TikTok for the very fact that it’s come into fashion. In the meantime, this Chinese mobile app has been challenging YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram in the Top 10 most popular social networks.
If you haven’t had an opportunity to familiarize yourself with this digital phenomenon, it’s time to meet TikTok – the world’s most popular Apple Store download of 2018.
What: TikTok mobile app.
Purpose: The app lets you record and edit short videos. There used to be a 15-second limit which was later expanded to 1 minute. The editing software lets you change the speed of the video, apply filters and add music. The latter option is often used for LipSync – the kind of selfie videos in which people pretend they are singing by mouthing the words to the songs.
Creators: The app was launched by the Chinese company ByteDance in 2016. It was first released under the name Douyin, and was mainly aimed at the Chinese market. A year later it was relaunched as TikTok. At some point, its Asian users launched the “Karma Is a Bitch” challenge that involved users posting videos in which they instantly changed their homely image into a glamorous one. This cyber-flash-mob was responsible for TikTok’s global fame. The same year, the company acquired a similar software program, musical.ly, which was quite well-known in both Europe and North America. As a result, all 100 million users of the karaoke app discovered TikTok on their phones instead of musical.ly on the same day. Since then, the brand has continued to surge across the world.
What’s new: TikTok is basically a mix of Snapchat, Instagram Stories, and long-forgotten Vine. Pretty much every aspect looks familiar: subscriptions, live broadcasts, direct messages, and the newsfeed – you’ve seen it all before. Aside, perhaps, from fairly sophisticated in-built editing software. No more fussing with video-related apps – you can instantly record, assemble and enhance your video with filters in just a few minutes. It’s as quick and simple as can be.
What people do with it: The app’s newsfeed is full of lifestyle sketches, parodies, dances, and tricks. Occasionally users come up with some original challenges – check out this fake plane ride challenge with toilet seats, detergent bottles and other weird objects used to imitate plane windows.
Target audience: The majority of TikTok users are teenagers – and most of the influencers are, too.
Mission: According to TikTok’s official website, their mission ‘is to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and moments that matter in everyday life.’ Additionally, the app’s creators claim that ‘TikTok empowers everyone to be a creator directly from their smartphones, and is committed to building a community by encouraging users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos.’
If you are already familiar with Snapchat or Instagram, you probably won’t find it hard to master TikTok. For your convenience, here’s a short general walk-through.
You don’t need to register on TikTok if you are only browsing other people’s profiles and videos. Subscribing and posting your own content requires that you create your own page. You can link this page to your e-mail, phone or another social network account.
The main navigation tab is located in the lower part of the screen. The most important button shows you the feed, which displays all the content. While watching videos, you may notice the Like and Comment buttons on the right side. Press the lower left corner to look up info regarding the music track. To switch back and forth between videos, swipe up and down. Swiping right lets you see the author’s profile.
Just like in Instagram, the search tab enables you to find profiles and videos by hashtags.
Each TikToker’s page has a button with three dots. Click on that button to get notifications about new posts from this user. The other way to subscribe is to find a page by its unique QR code – the app has an in-built QR scanner.
Do you want to edit video on your phone?
Download Movavi Clips for Android
All information about events, live broadcasts, new videos, and incoming messages can be viewed in Notifications.
Your page appearance can be customized in the Profile section. Here you can also find all relevant statistics concerning your viewership, subscriptions, and likes. Your personal QR code is available in this section, too.
Everything that has to do with content creation is conducted via the central button on the control panel. You can add a video from the gallery or record a new one. During recording, you can switch between the two cameras on your smartphone, apply filters, stickers and masks, and even adjust the speed. To add sound, click the button in the upper part of the screen and choose music from the internal library. Alternatively, you can upload your own track.
The videos you add from the gallery can be edited, too: there is the opportunity to add music, filters, stickers and even simple special effects such as zooming in, camera shake, etc.
Once you’re done with recording and editing, you can add a description and hashtags, edit privacy preferences and do simultaneous cross-posting to other social networks.
TikTok lets you record duets. To do this, find the video you want to use for your duet, tap the Share option and hit Duet. A similar algorithm applies if you want to record your reaction to someone else’s video. Hit Share again and choose Reaction. Now your recording will appear in a small window which you can place on the original video. All filters, masks and other related features are available for these options.
The future of TikTok is unknown. These kinds of apps fall out of fashion just as quickly as they come into it. We’ve already lost Vine, Snapchat is no longer a thing, and hardly anyone remembers Periscope. So far, TikTok has impacted the market primarily through the size of its audience – particularly its loyal Chinese audience, which lacks access to most alternative social resources such as Facebook. Youngsters seem to love TikTok, which gives the app a huge commercial potential. Consequently, the more money it brings to ByteDance, the higher the chance that the company will simply buy its competitors out in the same way that it purchased musical.ly.
