TikTok Reaches 1 Billion Monthly Active Users

TikTok announced in a blog post today that 1 billion people use TikTok every month. From a report: That means that on this big rock in space that we call home, about one in seven-and-a-half people are regularly watching short-form videos of dancing, dangerous "milk crate challenges" and even actual educational content. For context, Facebook said that in June it had 2.9 billion monthly active users, up 7% year over year. But TikTok's growth is rapid -- this new user data marks a 45% increase in monthly active users since July 2020, when it had 689 million users. Plus, this July, TikTok became the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion global downloads, per app analytics firm SensorTower. The competition that TikTok poses to Western tech giants is palpable -- Instagram, owned by Facebook, has radically shifted its focus, declaring that it's no longer a photo-sharing app. Instagram is heavily promoting Reels, its TikTok clone, and even discussion forums like Reddit are enticed by the promise of short-form video feeds. Instagram even advised creators that if they recycle watermarked TikToks as posts on Reels, the content will be less discoverable.

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[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The beauty of nerd-elitism is unrivaled. Anyway, time to get some spandex for Comicon, cya later.

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[OrangeTide]

additionally there are intelligent people that would prefer to do stupid things. it's easier and you don't have to look down your nose and sneer at everyone.

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[way2trivial]

They might be.. but the median is where it's at.

4 people 118, 100, 100, 80 75% above average
4 people 122, 100, 100, 80 75% below average

WTF is TikTok?

[CubicleZombie]

All I know about this service is that it is causing people to eat detergent pods again, and that domain names are so dumb at this point that I'd rather memorize IP addresses.

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[sarren1901]

It's just a video sharing phone app. My wife watches cat videos and sometimes crafting instructables on there.

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[alaskana98]

TikTok is a site where they took the worst, most insipid aspects of YouTube and grafted it onto an Instagram like interface. Thus, you have TikTok.

How much human brain time is this ?

[ti-coune]

I'm just wondering how much human brain time is wasted watching these videos, incl. Youtube shorts, Facebook videos, instagram,... Man, it's scary. We're not far from the Matrix where people are enslaved for the energy they produce. Although here it's for the energy they waste I guess. In Roman times they used to say, at least in French: Du Pain et des Jeux, which loosely translates to "Bread and Games". Give your people enough basic food and entertainment, and you'll have peace. We surely have enough Gam

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[sarren1901]

as much as was spent watching TV in years past. Now it's just on a smaller screen with less money spent on production.

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[ti-coune]

True. But isn't it the attention span is getting shorter and shorter with each iteration of technology ? I mean, we would sit an entire hour watching a TV show in the 80's. Then came online videos through Youtube, but they would last many minutes. Then came Facebook and Instagram and the likes, videos were shorten to a couple of minutes at best. Now with TikTok or the Youtube shorts, if something interesting is not happening in the first 5 seconds, people swipe right away to the next one. What's next ?

This is the plague

[sTERNKERN]

Not Covid-19.

You mean addicts. Usees!

[BAReFO0t]

Talked to a few kids who used it. They told me they had to uninstall it, because is was downright scary how quickly the system knew them way too well.
All "social" media should be illegal (because the rules of human psychology mean that is will *always* and *by definition* be a sociopathic hell or a just as harmful hyperconformist aka "moderated" circle jerk) ... but Tik Tok is a new breed with nothing holding it back anymore.
It is not useful. It benefits nobody. It isn't even enjoyable unless one thinks a d

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[ItsJustAPseudonym]

A fistful of Yuan?

Offtopic, but I just watched "A Fistful of Dollars" (Clint Eastwood spaghetti western) again. It's got plot holes aplenty, but it's fun to see him in his prime, and the musical score is great.

And billions of flies eat shit

[Opportunist]

That doesn't make me change my diet.

1 billion active wotsits?

[uufnord]

The title says '1 billion monthly active users', but then the article refers to '1 billion people'. These 2 things are very and extraordinarily different. These metrics are not equal. 1 billion monthly active users doesn't take into account the number of people who have more than one account, nor the number of bots that are being controlled by a single individual. They're confusing this metric to make it appear that more people support their app than can actually be accounted for. I suspect they are co

Are we sure they're unique?

[Somervillain]

Are these users unique or bots? How many usernames have precisely the same IP address on each login and device profile?

I know it's popular, but I am skeptical it's 1 in 7.5 people on the planet popular, especially without a Chinese audience or significant penetration in the over 40 market.

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[ThumpBzztZoom]

TechCrunch mentions Facebook's "monthly active users", but TikTok's own statement does not state monthly active users. It only says:

"More than 1 billion people around the world now come to TikTok every month to be entertained"

Even if they did state "Monthly active users", this can be defined many ways. There is the implication that these are unique users, but no requirement to do so. "Active" alone can be defined as someone who shares or posts something, or just someone who opens the app once. Or doesn't op

My friends don't use it...

[antdude]

... but they do use old Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.