Writings

 The pandemic undoubtedly was a travesty, but many arenas of internet and internet interaction flourished because of quarantine. Most people were just home. Safe, but bored. And the greatest comfort, because let’s be honest after two months straight, home, indoors, with your family, it’s not that much comfort anymore, was online. From online shopping to social media, internet usage and consumption skyrocketed. Availability was the pivoting axis of success for many social media apps, and none more so than Tiktok.

       It can be argued that the internet, because of social media has, and will vastly change, Web 3.0? Millennials represented the generation that created “the movement to the internet as an interactive platform…to collaborate, develop, share and operate …on the web” (SmartTv 0:32). However, now social media and apps, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok have exploded with relevancy of in-app consumerism. Anything from Ads to information, leaving these apps for some isn’t necessary. Twitter currently hosts many prominent news sources and correspondents; Instagram allows you to shop in app from companies like New Balance to Estee Lauder. The convenience of ‘staying’ with your friends while getting the news and shopping is remarkable. And now, entertainment? Concerts, classes, advice, camaraderie, hacks, shopping, news information and of course sprinkles of propaganda all unified under the great umbrella of Tiktok.

       Created in 2016, and founded by Chinese tech billionaire, Yiming Zhang Tiktok’s rise to millennial fame occurred during the 2020-2021 quarantine. Owned by Beijing tech company ByteDance, Tiktok was initially called Musically. It was a fun, teen friendly, music creation and dance app. The poor Gen Z’ers unfortunately were not aware of the storm called Millennials about to ruin their app very soon. With a sparkling new name change, Tiktok emerged in 2019 and within a few months the pandemic and quarantine became its perfect storm for success.

       In 2019 Tiktok garnered only about roughly “500million monthly users” (Oritz-Ospina) and compared to their competitors this was a drop in the bucket. However, Tiktok was still relatively new and it’s demographic young, with very little purchasing power. “In general, young people are more likely to use social media than older people. But some platforms are much more popular among younger people” (Ortiz-Ospina) And with youth comes less spending because they don’t have expendable income. This proved true to Tiktok during its beginning stages but once quarantine began, and Millennials were more available the app’s popularity grew.

       Being indoors, and some with revenue subsidized by the government because of the pandemic, led to Millennials accessing and downloading an app many swore was ‘a kids app.’ Undoubtedly, I am pointing the finger at myself too. Tiktok once oriented and the masters of us all, the algorithm, learns your ‘likes’ the ‘for you page’ or “FYP” is like nothing you’ve ever experienced on social media before. It is in fact amazing and certainly not restricted to just ‘kids.’ Millennials, who like me had been conditioned to experience social media a certain way thanks to Instagram and Facebook were now enthralled in this new media which quickly we shared on those older apps how great Tiktok is and should be downloaded. And yes, within months Tiktok revealed that it had reached one billion monthly users and “has reported a surge in users over the past few years, with a large amount of its U.S. audience joining amid the Covid-19 pandemic” (Bursztynsky).

       There we were, unemployed and house bound millennials surging an app into one billion monthly users, with very little regard for our online privacy rights that we may have been signing away. Data mining and privacy policy on most apps is a concern, but according to a source in an article for Business Insider “TikTok can collect as many as 50 kinds of information from users 13 and older — everything from age, username, gender, and email address to details about your mobile device, content of messages, and tracking data about your online activities. Because the company shares information with "advertising, marketing, and analytics vendors.. your information is not safe with TikTok” (Insider 2021.) That should have been enough to scare everyone off the app but it wasn’t. Tiktok is not just new social media it is all encompassing and innovative.

       The evolution of internet usage through social media demands creativity and content flow, the best way to do that is with advertising dollars. Tiktok allows Ads in app, allows creators to share sponsored content with handy codes in bio. Its user interface of sharing, videos with friends, clicking an @ button to be redirected to another page for purchase or more content. The algorithm learning the user’s preference at unimaginable and scary speeds producing what feels like genuinely curated content. Social media and all it’s app will have to take a page out of Tiktok’s book, and so far, we have seen Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat all launching and competing with the apps short form video appeal. But what most of Tiktok’s competitors are lacking is authenticity and relatability, and that came with the pandemic. Everyone was home, we were all seemingly experiencing the same thing, binge watch session, food trends and even dance phenomena’s, Tiktok brought it all to us through our screen and we literally shared it all.

References:

Bursztynsky. J. (2021.) Tiktok Say 1 Billion People Use The App Each Month. CNBC.com. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/27/tiktok-reaches-1-billion-monthly-users.html

Johnson. D. (2021.) Is TikTok safe? Here’s What You Need To Know. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/is-tiktok-safe

Oritz-Ospina. E. (2019.) The Rise Of Social Media. OurWorldinData.org. https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media

Web Smart Tv. (2010.) What Is Web 2.0. YouTube. https://youtu.be/NVeICpFAB-s