History
History
History
TikTok was not always the powerhouse that it is today. In fact, it’s success did not start until after it merged with a different popular app: Musical.ly.
Musical.ly, which originally released in 2014, was similar to TikTok in that it revolved around short 15 to 60 second videos created by “musers” (Musical.ly users). The main difference is that Musical.ly was based on, well, music. Lip-syncing and simple dance videos were extremely popular on the app, which gave users the ability to speed up or slow down their recordings to make more interesting videos.
The focused use of short videos and music as a social media platform was a relatively new idea, one which gradually led to Musical.ly becoming a farily popular app. By mid-2017, the app had over 200 million users, and millions of new videos were being uploaded daily.
This is when ByteDance Technology Company stepped into the picture, buying the app for an estimated $1 billion and merging it with the current version of TikTok that they had created: Douyin.
Before the Musical.ly merge, TikTok was known mainly to Chinese audiences under the name Douyin. The app (which originally released under the name A.me in late 2016) was also popular, garnering more than 100 million users within its first year. By combining the two similar apps, Bytedance had created a media beast with millions of already dedicated users. The TikTok we now know and love was released to international audiences in late 2018.
Although Douyin and TikTok are technically different apps, they have the same functionality. TikTok is just the international version of Douyin. The reason for this separation has to do with Chinese media censorship laws, which can be learned more about on the Security topic page.
The app currently has over 1 billion downloads, being the seventh most downloaded app of the past decade and the most downloaded app for 2018 and 2019. The popularity of the app has made ByteDance the most valuable private company in the world, with a worth of over $75 billion.
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