In 2014, the first Musical.ly prototype came out into the world and became a very popular social media app. The main headquarters was in Shanghai with an office in Santa Monica, California. App users are able to create and share short lip-sync videos. Later in August of 2014, the official version of Musical.ly was launched. 

Two years later, a company ByteDance launched the app Douyin in China. It took the company 200 days to develop the app. A year later in 2017, the company released TikTok to the world. Douyin is an app for the people living in China and TikTok is the international version. In a single year, TikTok had over 100 million users and over 1 billion videos viewed every day. The app is popular in Asia, the United States, and many other parts of the world. 

Much like Musical.ly, users can create and share short lip-syncs, comedy, and talent-showing videos. The music and lip-sync videos are usually 3 to 15 seconds long; short looping videos are from 3 to 60 seconds. 

Kaden Lyle, a junior, is a famous TikToker in our school for making funny videos on the app. 

“I think TikTok is a very fun app,” said Lyle. “I honestly only started making TikToks because I wanted clout but it turned out to be pretty fun.” 

Even though the app is free, you’re able to buy in-app purchases. As of October 2018, TikTok has been earning 3.5 million dollars per month. From October 2017 to October 2018, there was a 275% increase in revenue. 

However, Lyle doesn’t believe the success of Tiktok will continue.

“Eventually, Tiktok will run dry just like most other things because people will get tired of it.” 

Bryleigh De Jong (bryleigh.dejong@student.pella.k12.ia.us)