In just a few years of its existence, TikTok has become a staple of internet culture and social interaction for Generation Z, thanks to its flurry of short-form videos where users participate in viral challenges, lip sync and dance to music, show off comedic skits, and share their hot takes on society at large.
TikTok is owned by the colossal Chinese tech company called ByteDance.
TikTok didn't start as TikTok, but as two distinct apps that eventually merged; Musical.ly and Douyin.
Musical.ly was a app where users could create and share 25 second lip sync music videos. It was founded in 2014 by Alex Zhu and Louis Yang. The app was originally intended for short-form educational videos, but Zhu said that idea was "doomed to be a failure." But after wards the app hit the No. 1 spot in the App Store in the summer of 2015, and never left the charts. From Musical.ly, a new generation of stars was created, for example Jacob Sartorius.
Meanwhile, in September 2016, short-form video app Douyin launched in China. Short-form video creation was nothing new for China's market, but Douyin's popularity skyrocketed. Within a year, Douyin had 100 million users and 1 billion video views each day.
In September 2017, Douyin expanded outside of China to select international markets under a new name TikTok. The platform quickly rose to the top of the charts in Thailand, Japan, and other Asian markets.
In November 2017, Douyin's parent company, ByteDance, purchased Musical.ly in a deal valued at $1 billion. ByteDance first operated the two short-form video apps as two separate platforms. Less than a year later, in August 2018, ByteDance announced it would shut down Musical.ly and merge it into TikTok.
TikTok's popularity has skyrocketed aroud the world. Following a popularity boost during the coronavirus pandemic, TikTok surpassed 2 billion downloads worldwide in April across both iOS and Android devices, according to app analytics firm.