TikTok published in a blog post today that 1 billion people now use TikTok every month. That indicates that on this big milestone in space that we call home, about one in seven-and-a-half people are continually watching short-form videos of dancing, serious “milk crate social media challenges” and even genuine educational content.
For context, Facebook announced that in June it had 2.9 billion monthly active users, up 7% the year past year. But TikTok’s growth is speedy — this new user data signals a 45% increase in monthly active users since July 2020, when it had 689 million users. Plus, this July, TikTok became the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion global downloads, per-app analytics data firm SensorTower.
The competition that TikTok postures to Western tech giants is evident — Instagram, maintained by Facebook, has entirely shifted its focus, revealing that it’s no longer a photo-sharing app. Instagram is heavily pushing Reels to users, its TikTok clone, and even discussion platforms like Reddit are attracted by the promise of short-form video feeds. Instagram even suggested to creators that if they recycle watermarked TikToks as posts on Reels, the content will be less discoverable.
TikTok told that its largest markets are in the United States, Europe, Brazil, and Southeast Asia, even though its parent corporation ByteDance is headquartered in China. Of course, TikTok has suffered severe regulatory threats in the past few years — former President Trump tried to block U.S. business transactions with TikTok, and in India, home to 1.36 billion people, TikTok has been forbidden since last year.
Despite it all, TikTok resumes exhibiting remarkable growth. As recently as last month, TikTok parent firm ByteDance acquired the VR hardware company Pico, showing a potential future development into VR. It’s not a coincidence that all the while, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn his trillion-dollar platform into a “metaverse” corporation.
