The coronavirus outbreak in many countries and the stay-at-home directive has given rise to the download, usage and surge in revenue of many social networking platforms. One of which is TikTok: a social media app for making short-form lip sync, comedy, and talent video skits.
The app was created by the Chinese company, ByteDance and since it was introduced to the United States in 2017, it spread like a wildfire amongst young people. In October 2018, it became the most downloaded app in the U.S and it is also available in more than 150 markets in the world.
TikTok has become a fun escape from the scary coronavirus news churned out daily by the media and the app together with its Chinese twin app, Douyin ranked top in the world on mobile apps with the highest revenue generated in April.
A report by Sensor Tower states that for non-gaming apps, TikTok ranked first in April 2020 for global in-app revenue, after YouTube and dating app Tinder comes second and third respectively.
For in-app purchases, TikTok and Douyin’s numbers for April showed a tenfold increase to $78 million. This brought the Chinese apps ahead of older platforms like YouTube with close to $76 million in gross revenue and Tinder at $35 million.
The contribution of TikTok and Douyin to the Chinese market has generated 315 million downloads globally as against the 187 million downloads it had, the previous year. The Chinese market is also said to have contributed 86.6% of Douyin’s income and the U.S market at 8.2%.
This established, TikTok appears to be taking the spotlight from YouTube as it gives rise to the young generation of aspiring celebrities using the app. Thus, YouTube is looking to compete with the app by reportedly launching its own version called “Shorts.” Just like TikTok, Shorts will enable users to upload brief videos into a feed inside the mobile app.
In other news — last week — TikTok got a new CEO. Kevin Mayer, head of the Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer and international business became the new CEO of TikTok and also the COO of the video app’s parent company ByteDance.
Considering that YouTube is looking to launch “Shorts”, with the new CEOs experience at Walt Disney, it will be interesting to see what initiative he would put in place to continue pushing the app in the face of its users as well as increase the company’s revenue.
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