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Tag: tiktok ceo

  • Us Government Asks Google and Apple to Remove Chinese App TikTok – Will TikTok Survive Now?

    A popular social media app, Tiktok allows its users to create, watch and share short videos that are created on mobile devices or webcams. The app has taken the digital world by storm as users create videos of different genres like pranks, games, entertainment, etc. It owes its popularity to its ease of use, high levels of engagement and addictive quality.

    What is TikTok?
    The Downfall of TikTok
    Will Tiktok Survive in the US?

    What is TikTok?

    Douyin is a short-form video hosting service created and owned by a Chinese Company called ByteDance. It was originally released in September 2016.  The international version of Douyin is called Tiktok, which was launched in 2017 in most markets outside of mainland China for iOS and Android platforms. However, it was only after it merged with another Chinese social media service, Musical.ly in August 2018 that it became available for use worldwide.

    Since its launch, Tiktok has rapidly grown and gained popularity in almost every part of the world. By October 2020 Tiktok was downloaded in excess of 2 billion times, making it the third fastest-growing brand of 2020.  Growing further, it became the most popular website of 2021, surpassing Google.

    Top Downloaded Apps in 2021
    Top Downloaded Apps in 2021

    The Downfall of TikTok

    Although successful and globally popular, Tiktok has had its share of controversies. Through the years, it has been subjected to bans in countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan which have cited reasons like inappropriate content.

    These bans, however, were lifted within a short time as the company took proactive steps to take down offensive material as well as set up local offices to monitor and sanitize the content posted on its app.

    India Banned TikTok

    March 23, 2020, will always be remembered in history as the day the world literally came to a standstill.

    • China came into sharp focus as the epicentre of the dreaded COVID-19 virus.
    • India banned 59 Chinese apps including Tiktok in June 2020 citing reasons of security of the state and public and prejudicial to the sovereignty of India.
    • In January 2021 this ban was made permanent.
    • India was Tiktok’s largest market with over 200 million users just before the ban.
    • The Tiktok app was downloaded more in India than anywhere else in the world between July 2019 and June 2020.
    • In February 2021 Tiktok announced a layoff of 2000 Indian employees.

    US Government planning to ban TikTok

    The app’s struggle first began in August 2020 with then President Donald Trump.

    • Trump signed an order to ban all Tiktok transactions in 45 days if it was not sold by ByteDance
    • Within days, Trump issued a second order giving ByteDance 90 days to sell the US portion of its business to US companies. This was done citing reasons for national security. The Trump administration was concerned over the privacy issues of the app users.
    • There were talks of Oracle and Walmart buying a stake in Tiktok. This was done to alleviate fears of the misuse of the private data of US citizens.
    • These tentative deals have been blocked by numerous court challenges and it remains uncertain.

    The fight continued with the Joe Biden Administration.

    • The new administration has yet not set any new policy on the app.
    • It claims to be evaluating the risks to USA data and will deal with it decisively and effectively if required.

    On June 30, 2022, Brendan Carr, one of the commissioners of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) renewed the call to remove the app from Apple and Google’s App Store.  

    He has written to these companies strongly advocating the removal saying,

    “It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data”.  

    The letter also refers to the numerous controversies that the app has found itself in, over the years. The ByteDance-owned Tiktok however firmly denies sharing user data with the Chinese Government.

    The Drastic Downfall In The Google Play Store Rating Of TikTok.
    The popular Chinese application ‘TikTok’ is now getting a strong negative reviews and negative publicity. Let us see the complete report on the drastic downfall in the Google Play Store rating of TikTok.
    StartupTalkyYash Gupta

    Will Tiktok Survive in the US?

    This begs the question – Will Tiktok survive if the US succeeds in convincing Apple and Google to remove the app from its stores?

    The statistics of Tiktok users

    • Tiktok has over 138 million users in the US alone.
    • The age demographic ranges from 13 to 60.
    • In terms of revenue, the app earned in excess of 500 million dollars in 2020.
    • The number of users of the app is consistently growing.  Even among the adult users.

    So yes, if the USA succeeds in convincing Apple and Google to remove the app from its stores, it will certainly be detrimental to the business.

    However, the app is still active and growing exponentially around the world.  The marketing of the app, although in its nascent stages, is growing in demand due to its vast audience access.  There are agencies which are eager to help brands create quirky content that garners eyeballs on Tiktok.

    Brands have also joined the app by opening user accounts which are used to create and post mini-videos for promotions.  Tiktok offers them the option of promoting their videos to other users for a fee.

    Tiktok also makes money from in-app purchases.

    Its easy accessibility, high engagement and deep penetration in different markets globally make it the world’s most popular app ever.  It is available in more than 150 markets in 75 different languages.

    Conclusion

    Even if the US market shuts down for this app, the likelihood of the business shutting down is slim. The app is like a multi-headed giant that just grows a new head when an existing head is axed. Having said this, it is imperative for the app to put measures into place that ensure the user of their privacy as well as have a strict policy about the content being posted on it.

    FAQs

    Is the FCC banning TikTok?

    Yes, the FCC has asked Google and Apple to remove the Chinese app, TikTok from their stores.

    Is TikTok banned in the US?

    No, TikTok is not banned in the US but might be soon banned over privacy concerns.

  • TikTok – The Most Valuable Startup in the World

    In India, it is almost impossible to find a person who does not have any idea about video creating app TikTok. On its website, TikTok describes itself as “a destination for short-form mobile videos.”

    TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, which has been around since 2012 and is valued at $425 billion, as of July 2021. According to the latest news dated September 28, 2021, TikTok is currently used by around 1 billion users every month. In fact, it’s generating so much attention that TikTok parent, ByteDance was recently crowned the world’s most valuable startup.

    History

    TikTok (formerly known as musical.ly) is a free social media platform that lets you watch, create, and share, discover short music videos — often to a soundtrack of the top hits in music, usually of 15 seconds. The app musical.ly was used by young people as a platform to express themselves and showcase their talents through singing, dancing, comedy, lip-syncing, and other activities.

    Though TikTok was originally available as musical.ly in the U.S. but was rebranded when Musical.ly merged with TikTok on 2 August 2018, to create a ‘bigger and better short-video community’ when the two apps merged in August 2018. The app is now called TikTok, complete with a new logo. The app has all of the same features as musical.ly and allows users to create videos recorded in 15 seconds or less and share them across a community.

    TikTok incorporates the most popular elements of both apps with a feed that highlights the users’ community. In addition to this, a “For You” feed uniquely recommends the relevant videos based on the users’ interest and viewing preferences. The video clips on the platform may only be 15 seconds long but they are having a big impact on the audience.

    With more than 1 billion users, TikTok is incredibly popular, owing in part to its slick mashup of features from other kid favorites. As with the lip-synching app Dubsmash, users can watch and record videos of themselves lip-syncing to popular music and soundtracks. And just like YouTube, TikTok is an interactive world of videos that lets you connect with friends and admirers through likes, comments, and even duets.

    About CEO of TikTok

    ByteDance’s CEO and founder is Zhang Yiming, a 35-year-old entrepreneur. Information about Zhang is scarce as he doesn’t give many interviews but he has even created a real estate search engine. He has studied at Nankai University.

    CEO of Tiktok
    Zhang Yiming – CEO of TikTok | CEO & Founder of ByteDance 

    In a 2015 speech at his alma mater, Zhang revealed a few other details about himself. He is a big fan of biographies and spent a lot of time in college reading. He said he is socially awkward, precisely a “science man” who introduces himself at school reunions with “Hi, I installed your computer.” During college, he used to build websites and did tech troubleshooting for extra money. As an added bonus, it helped him meet his wife.

    ByteDance is the Chinese version of Facebook. It was launched in 2012 in Beijing. It has chat apps and news apps. After acquiring an AI company, it jumped onto the video-sharing bandwagon. In 2015, it launched a Chinese video app called ‘Douyin’, which was a great hit.

    In 2017, the concept of Douyin was taken further in the form of TikTok, when there was already a lot of competition from Musical.ly, a video sharing app, which was already there at that time in the market. However, ByteDance soon acquired it and merged Musical,ly’s userbase with TikTok. In December 2017, the deal was closed at $1 billion dollars.

    In 2018, Softbank had invested $3 billion dollars, which raised TikTok’s worth to $75 billion dollars. There’s something special about TikTok, looking at the firms that are placing such trust in it!

    TikTok has offices in many countries, including India. Surprisingly (or not), TikTok has several million users in India.

    Also Read: List of Famous Entrepreneurs You Must Know About | 2020 Updated List

    How TikTok works?

    TikTok uses AI at its core. The algorithm it adopts is rumoured to be more powerful than the ones used in other social media platforms. It uses your video viewing history to populate relevant videos feed in “For You”. In this app, personalization is at its peak. If you watch these 15-sec videos completely, then its AI feature will serve you with more associated content.

    The more you converse with it, the more it gets trained to provide your personalized feed. It is different from other platforms because it just shows you recommended videos or posts based on your recent activity. What’s interesting is that ByteDance has a different version of TikTok for Chinese users whereas a different version for the rest of the world, Douyin. It generates revenue in a pattern similar to that of other social media apps.

    According to some reports, an average user spends nearly 52 minutes on TikTok. With over a billion users and reportedly available in 150 countries and counting, the platform for short-form mobile videos has left other social media platforms way behind. It has 1.5 billion registered users with the maximum users lying in the 15-25 age group.

    The gigantic userbase has an almost equal sex ratio. 54 % of TikTok users are males and 46% are female. The visionary Softbank fund has always invested in startups that have worn the crown of most valuable entrepreneurial ventures.

    TikTok is used by many Asian countries like Cambodia, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, etc. TikTok strongly influences the lower and middle classes of China and India. TikTok has recorded that around 43% of the new users of the app are from India. The app amassed a whopping 200 million+ users from India before being banned. Besides, it has also been seen that the Indian users spent over 5.5 billion hours on TikTok in 2019, according to the available data. A major credit surely goes to Jio internet services, which gave Indians instant access to these 15-sec videos with the ability to upload similar videos. The growing segment of influencers grew has a lot to do with TikTok.

    How does TikTok Make Money?

    ByteDance does a lot more than just run TikTok. It also owns Toutiao, a massively popular news platform with 240 million downloads, as well as products like Xigua Video, TopBuzz, and BuzzVideo.

    TikTok is available in 155 countries. It’s also available in 75 languages, which helps to attract these many users. TikTok is the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store, with 33 million downloads in a single quarter of 2019. The app strongly beats out all other social media giants like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, which round out the top five. These numbers of downloads help earn the revenue.

    TikTok offers in-app purchases of coins, starting from 100 for $0.99 and leveling up to 10,000 for $99.99. Users can give coins to their favorite creators, who can in turn exchange them for digital gifts. Mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported that TikTok users worldwide spent $3.5 million on in-app purchases during the month of October 2018, which is nearly four times what they did in October 2017.

    Digiday reported that agencies also may start advertising on TikTok going forward given its explosive popularity. According to the Nanjing Marketing Group, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, offers splash ads that can cost about $150,000 for one day and newsfeed ads for about $4 per click. Thus, many celebrities, and brands like Pizza Hut pay to run such campaigns or the promotion and endorsements.

    TikTok now enjoys a monopoly in the micro video-sharing market. It’s also expanding to the news industry. It recently bought a French news company and has a stake in US-based news agencies. The use of AI is extremely high in TikTok’s initiatives. It uses an AI tool that collects various news clips and prepares articles in a few seconds.

    Challenges Faced by TikTok

    Though TikTok has a monopoly, the journey to date hasn’t been smooth for TikTok. It had to pay $5.7 billion dollars for violating children’s privacy in the US. India also banned this app for a few days. Mark Zuckerberg spoke about TikTok and its dominancy in US and other countries. He expressed concerns about the privacy of users of TikTok.

    Yet many reports credit Zuckerberg’s reaction to fears of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp losing their grip over social media to TikTok. Recent reports suggest TikTok has already positioned itself as the topmost social media app in the market. The US government has been critical of TikTok over concerns on the national security.

    When it comes to value addition, the 15-sec videos on TikTok don’t do anything big. However, they provide entertainment and comical content, a stress buster for billions across the globe. Underneath all of this, ByteDance is building an empire using millennials and having greater influence over them.

    Many feel that millennials are now morally and ethically more vulnerable than ever, with attraction towards silly content in the name of entertainment as one such reason. In February, the FTC in the U.S. fined TikTok $5.7 million for violating the children’s privacy law (COPPA) and required the app to implement an age gate.

    Moreover, some Indian politicians and parents also believe that the app’s content is inappropriate, particularly with regard to its use by minors. Thus, the Tamil Nadu court ruled against TikTok and banned it, saying the app could expose children to sexual predators as well.

    But after all these hurdles, TikTok managed to persuade the governments by implementing some policies by restricting the app for users above 13 years. Now, parents can help children manage their screen time by selecting how much time they would like their child to spend on TikTok like 40, 60, 90, and 120 minutes per day. This feature is password-protected; when users reach their limit they have to enter a password to continue. Parents can set the password to be in total control of the screen time.

    Also Read: ScoopWhoop – Ruling the Internet With the Most Entertaining and Creative Content!

    Conclusion

    Even after facing all these hurdles, TikTok has successfully circumvented them to become the World’s Most Valuable Startup beating all other social media giants. It has set an example of how by using the power of the youth, which is revered for possessing the highest potential, a startup can excel in the market by using appropriate strategies.

  • Interesting Tips and Tools to find TikTok Influencers

    Such insane and rapid growth of TikTok has been experienced all of a sudden that creators there were not considered as influencers for quite a time. Users doubted that how can a newbie become famous overnight? And what is the guarantee he won’t disappear as rapidly as he raised?

    Brands struggled to put their faith in the TikTokers because their popularity seemed too fragile and easy to fall until recently. However, in no time TikTokers turned out to be as noteworthy as other social media influencers when it comes to paid partnerships with brands. No wonder media agencies and brands looked at it as a worthy platform and willingly included TikTok in their marketing strategy.

    TikTok, launched in 2017, has taken the internet with over 1.5 Billion downloads. Started as a video-sharing app in China, emerged from Musical.ly in 2018, it grew into an empire.

    Famous TikTok influencers in India
    Famous TikTok influencers in India

    TikTokers are expert in creative ideas like lip syncs of popular songs, memes, video challenges, karaoke, comedy-dramas, and dance videos that will entertain the user for hours. Each TikTok video posted has the opportunity to be viewed by millions of the users. This accessibility is because TikTok’s algorithm is among the one of the best, providing every TikTok user with an equal opportunity to go viral.

    TikTok has grown tremendously over the last couple of years, it was downloaded more than 1.5 billion times.

    TikTok, before banning in India, had more users in India than anywhere. It had more Indian users than those of China, with the United States backing up the third place, with over 123 million downloads.

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    How to find TikTok Influencers

    To track a TikTok influencer in a marketing campaign, one has to find reputable TikTok influencers to partner with. Brands must apply their best judgment when selecting influencers to represent their brand.

    By not researching carefully may put brands at risk of falling short with their TikTok influencer marketing campaigns. Brands should be familiar with what’s important to influencers in brand collaboration. Here are some tips to successful TikTok influencer marketing campaign.

    Most followed accounts on TikTok
    Most followed accounts on TikTok 

    TikTok offers a navigational control on its application. Users can search for hashtags, in particular, specific user handles, and keywords on the mobile app. Users can go to the Discover page and search the required or trending terms/keywords within the top search bar. Users and brands identify top trending videos from the tabs like Top, Videos, Users, Hashtags, and Hashtags.

    Analyze Target Audience

    First of all, determine if the target audience is on TikTok and if they are, analyze which influencers would be suitable with the branding or marketing.

    Presuming that TikTok creators with the highest followers are impactful is the biggest misunderstanding and users should avoid doing that.

    Find Existing Influencer Content

    Users can even search for video content that’s tagged with #ad to identify sponsored content on TikTok. This enables brands to quickly locate existing influencer content to decide if those influencers are worth contacting about collaboration offers.

    Look for Influencers On Other Social Media

    You can check on the other popular social platforms for already known influencers, like Instagram and YouTube.

    Influencers commonly boast themselves on multiple platforms, which means if they’re excelling on Instagram and YouTube, they may also have a growing TikTok fanbase. It’s always beneficial to check in on the influencers who have already worked with on other platforms.

    Platforms to find TikTok Influencers

    Brand marketers or any marketing agencies are constantly looking for influencers on TikTok for their marketing campaign. To market on, organizations need analytics to select the right influencers, as well as to measure and track the performance of the content. There are several tools to look for TikTok influencers.

    Upfluence

    Upfluence provides a robust influencer search and a discovery module. It also provides brands and marketers several tools to assist with social listening and ties altogether with additional tools that allow them to manage their campaigns with ease.

    It consists of a massive database of around a million influencers across social media. You can search for influencers using as many keywords as you require for the organization. You can dig deeper into keywords to both find TikTok influencers and also reduce influencers to more manageable numbers to narrow down the selection process.

    Lets Influence

    Lets Influence has a team of experienced product, design, creative sales & marketing professionals who came together to create an influencer platform. This platform provides tools for brands and agencies to discover influencers dealing primarily in TikTok and manage their campaigns.

    Influencer Marketing is Easy and Affordable with Lets Influence
    With more and more people joining social media, influencer marketing has gainedmuch prominence. Since 2017, influencer marketing has been the most preferredoption for most marketers and brands across industries. As per a recent reportby Talkwalker, 72% of the people surveyed were planning to incr…
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    Influsoft

    Influsoft was planned and designed by a professional team of Influencer Marketing professionals who spotted a need for a fully functioning platform that manages the entire Influencer Marketing campaign process cross-platform. It gives the Influsoft users insight on to track and achieve their goals, maximizing return for brands and marketers.

    The key benefits include brand analysis & Social Listening, AI-powered authenticity (to check whether an influencer has an authentic following), and it has fraud detection capabilities to get the authentic and accurate details of an influencer. Influsoft is like a one-stop-shop when it comes to influencer platforms.

    Julius

    Julius allows brands to filter through a huge database of influencers that is out of the capability of a human review. There are multiple filters available, Julius provides users with the ability to jot down selected names from a list of influencers based on several search criteria.

    However, on Julius, TikTok influencers cannot be searched. TikTok itself uses Julius, meaning there’s a high probability the platform will roll out TikTok search capabilities shortly.

    Fanbytes

    Fanbytes helps brands find influencers across multiple social media channels, with TikTok being its most recent additional platform. Fanbytes consists of more than half a million TikTok influencers.

    It even gives access to TikTok bios and influencers who have mentioned other brands. The platform has also run its TikTok influencer campaigns, making Fanbytes a reliable resource for finding TikTok influencers.

    The Bottom Line

    Everyone is now almost familiar with TikTok influencer marketing. even if the platform is getting banned in some countries, users have seen gaining its popularity.

    Brands have onboarded many influencers and making themselves profitable organizations. Companies have partnered with many experienced influencers marketing agencies to launch an impactful TikTok influencer campaign.