The Journey and Future of TikTok

The sun of 2020 only saw the rise of Tiktok; however, what is its fate? 

TikTok is gaining immense popularity amongst the masses, and every marketer should be aware of it if they know what’s good for them.

Every popular social media user has admitted that it is time to transition to Tiktok to appeal to a wider audience. Additionally, marketers increasingly consider TikTok when developing communications for relevant target groups, and it will soon be recognized as the prime social media handle.

Despite the fact that more people, particularly members of Generation Z and millennials, are watching videos on social media, TikTok, the Chinese short-video sharing network, is expected to overtake other social media platforms in the near future, according to predictions made by both Meta (formerly Facebook) and Snapchat.

According to Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, users are spending less time on Snapchat watching their friends’ Stories.

Instead, a TikTok feature called Spotlight that competes with Snapchat is enticing more and more Snapchat users.

Spiegel informed the analysts that “friend story posting and viewing per daily active user have not restored to pre-pandemic levels,” adding that “this is a continuation of the pattern we have witnessed throughout the pandemic.”

TikTok users have dramatically increased since it became available for download in 2018. The app beat the previous record set by other programmes in the first quarter of 2020 with 315 million downloads. Of the more than 2 billion downloads overall, almost 120 million occurred just in April 2020.

A new generation of social media is revolutionizing how people interact with one another and consume digital content in the midst of COVID-19 quarantines, and TikTok is at the forefront of this movement with its creative and original design.

TikTok may draw young people.

The early TikTok culture, when it was simply teenagers having fun, has been preserved to a large extent. Even the most renowned TikTokers will shoot in natural places since all movies are made on mobile devices. 

Due to the lesser expectation of superficial film quality than competitors Youtube or Instagram, TikTok combines the communication advantages of video with the emphasis on content over aesthetics (as does Twitter). 

As a result, it is a more realistic form of social media than those platforms. From bad camera angles to autotuned Russian cereal adverts, faults and authenticity may be noticed in current trends on TikTok.

A nice improvement is TikTok’s genuineness. Most businesses, governments, news organizations, and even famous people have taken their time adopting it, so their exposure to the app is rather restricted. 

Ads are rarely featured on the site, and when they are, they are never political. Tiktok artist runs their brands through advertisement on tiktok. Sponsorships, as opposed to the tech platform, let authors profit from advertising.

TikTok has a system in place that pays artists depending on how many people see their videos, as opposed to Facebook, which does not require advertisers to provide accurate numbers. The administrative changes made by TikTok have reduced corporate control over the content and led to more moral advertising.

Less Social, More Content

Your personalized feed will be available after just five minutes of use on the social video platform created by the Chinese company ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. Decreased reliance on social media and increased focus on encouraging participation and content discovery. Artificial intelligence is a crucial part of the algorithm-driven software that is revolutionizing the way we take in information from social media.

TikTok’s onboarding process is incredibly simplified and mobile-optimized in comparison to social graph-driven programmes like Facebook or Twitter. Without even registering, users may start browsing through an infinite stream of full-screen vertical movies. 

New users are not required to search for individuals to follow and fill their feeds. Because of its meme-centric content, TikTok offers users a more relaxed “just show me something funny” experience by letting computers handle the majority of the curating.

TikTok is famous for its snappy and brief films, which are perfect for the platform’s one-at-a-time stream format. Swipe to the next video if a video isn’t engaging for you, and TikTok’s algorithm will keep track of your dismissal. All users are treated equally in this setup, which enables the finest material to generate a snowball effect and get views.

The user interface encourages viewers to look for new videos based on previously liked content, placing them in a swiping mode akin to that of Tinder rather than going in search of their favourite video producers. 

On TikTok, it is possible to amass a sizable following, but the status game there is more about staying up to date with the newest memes and giving them your own witty twist than it is about creating an influencer brand based on the strength of personality. Since its user interface is algorithm-driven, it also follows that content always takes precedence over social interactions.

Takeaways for brands

Brand endorsements previously were only something posh celebrities did. In fact, it was something that seemed impossible to the normal community. However, Tik Tok is creating a future for normal people too. By creating and presenting equal opportunities to all, Tiktok is receiving unfettered attention and rightly so. This is probably what will make it a go-to social media for people in the future.

The social network also itself benefits from then receiving consumer information. Additionally, despite it being the rage, Tiktok still faces tough competition with Instagram. The content is still being shared across the two social networking platforms because the majority of users still utilize both.

Conclusion

There is no denying that TikTok is now experiencing tremendous development. But what will TikTok look like in ten years? We are unable to say this for sure because algorithm developments are unpredictable. It also depends more on what the company has in store for its audience. One thing is for certain: the platform must regularly release incredible features if it is to compete successfully with applications like Facebook and Instagram.