Tik Tok: how did the application that challenges Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube come about?

The short video app tik tok It has had a great reach worldwide, since its design and content are very striking. This platform began as a business idea that gradually transformed to the point of being one of the most successful social networks today.

In fact, Tik Tok has brought an innovative idea to the digital world that has captivated the audience, since it offers the possibility of seeing and creating clips, of a maximum of three minutes, and that they have the option of using different audio, text and video formats. edition.

Users upload and view content of all kinds on the platform: they can reproduce trends, create blogs about their day-to-day activities, teach in a dynamic and fun way; and even many companies have implemented it as an advertising strategy.

The truth is that the short video format has pleased the audience so much that it has been reproduced on other social networks and is increasingly in demand, so Tik Tok, although it is a very recent application, has made a powerful competition for Tik Tok. other platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, among others.

The creator

Chinese Zhang Yiming is the founder of this successful platform, who is also one of the wealthiest people in the world.

Zhang Yiming is one of the richest men in the world. His first project began in 2009, which is still in force. (Reuters Photo)

According to the European media ‘El Español’, Yiming completed his university studies in Microelectronics at Nankai University, in the city of Tianjin, China.

Subsequently, he did a specialization in Software Engineering. In 2006, the businessman began his university career and began working with a digital travel reservation company called Kuxun.

In this way, Yiming was expanding his knowledge in the world of technology and his colleagues recognized his great potential. This is how, in 2009, he founded his first company called 99 Fang, a web platform specialized in providing information on real estate, which is still in force today.

After having awakened his entrepreneurial spirit, the man was encouraged to create his second company in 2012: ByteDance, the company that currently manages the operation of several social networks, including Tik Tok.

Currently, Yiming is no longer part of the company and gave his position to Liang Rubo, the co-founder of ByteDance and who is also in charge of human resources, because he wanted to continue undertaking other projects, so there is still the possibility that his departure is temporary.

How did TikTok come about?

In the year 2016, the music short video app Music.ly was trending and had greatly captivated the public. However, Yiming wanted to adopt the idea and create a competing platform, which would be called Douyin.

This application was better received than expected in the Asian country, since users began to have fun with the different options it offered such as emoticons, text, and audio.

Douyin even enabled the possibility of live broadcasts, which made its growth on the rise. This is how in 2017, Douyin changed its name to Tik Tok to have international reach, although in China it is still recognized by its original name.

As reported by the specialized web portal ‘Walk The Chat’, in November 2017, ByteDance acquired Music.ly for one billion dollars (3.7 billion pesos) and merged it with Tik Tok.

In just two years, the social network reached an unimaginable level of growth and managed to unseat other applications that had already been a trend in the market, such as Snapchat.

Difficulties for the platform

Although everything seemed rosy, managing an application with a base of more than 100 million users would imply a great responsibility. According to ‘Walk The Chat’, the constant interaction between people is a great risk.

For this reason, Tik Tok administrators must periodically monitor that Internet users behave appropriately and that content that may affect human rights and free expression is not uploaded.

However, as ‘El Español’ reported, many countries have prohibited the use of this application, as was the case in India in 2020, where other platforms of Chinese origin are also restricted for reasons of national security.

The same thing happened in Pakistan and even the former president of the United States Donald Trump publicly announced that he had plans to cancel Tik Tok in the country, after the economic and political controversy he had with China.

Source: Elcomercio