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I had a vague understanding of  what TikTok.com was before I did my web project. I assumed it was mostly dance videos and memes, but there’s definitely a lot more going on. TikTok is a social media website. While its primary focus is short-form videos, it also has a messaging system, a complex algorithm, and live streams. The videos can be anywhere from a few seconds to ten minutes in length. While I was scrolling through my “For You Page,” I was surprised to get full length documentaries mixed in with six second videos of NFL highlights. The live streams are similar to how I assume Twitch.tv works. It’s primarily video game streams, but I did see a few streams of people walking around in a city just talking.

The history of TikTok is what I found most interesting. TikTok is owned by a company called ByteDance. ByteDance already had a very popular Chinese website called Douyin before they made TikTok. Douyin was developed in 2016 and within a year had 100 million users. ByteDance wanted to expand Douyin to a global audience, so they launched TikTok in the international market in 2017 Also in 2017, ByteDance purchased the social media app Musical.ly and the two merged in 2018. ByteDance spent over one billion dollars in 2018 to promote TikTok. I’m assuming ByteDance were so confident in TikTok’s potential after the success of Douyin, that they were willing to throw a lot of money around to promote it..

TikTok has an advanced A.I. algorithm in order to suggest videos on the “For You Page.” TikTok released the basics of the algorithm. The algorithm is based on a combination of accounts you follow, video’s you’ve liked, favorited, or shared, videos you’ve marked as “not interested,” videos you’ve watched until the end, and many more factors.

TikTok’s main revenue is from advertisements. The TikTok algorithm is very appealing to advertising companies since they can play ads based on the content on your “For You Page.” Ads are seamlessly played while scrolling through videos. In my experience, I didn’t even know it was an ad until I saw a “sponsored” tag at the bottom of the video. In addition to the ads, TikTok is very useful for a brand’s viral marketing campaign. In June 2023, TikTok was flooded with videos about McDonald’s Grimace Shake. While the videos were comedic (and a bit off-putting,) they were primarily  user created. It’s possible McDonald’s didn’t spend a dime for a large amount of advertising. TikTok also has in-app Coins you can purchase. Coins can be used as a donation for content creators and live streamers.

TikTok currently ranks 14th in global web traffic, 23rd in USA web traffic, and 7th in the Social Media Networks category. There were a total of 2.2 billion visits during the month of September. TikTok is one of the most downloaded apps in Apple’s App store. While TikTok is currently profitable, I’m skeptical about its success long-term. I don’t use social media very often, but I’ve seen a few become very popular only to flame out.