Short video sharing platform TikTok has achieved another milestone in its meteoric rise within the past year. The platform has reached 1 billion users that use it every month for the past few months. The coronavirus pandemic that virtually shut the global space in 2020 was a proximate driver of the massive growth of TikTok. With most parts of the world on lockdown last year, social platforms like TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter, provided the avenue for a wide array of professionals and individuals to express themselves.
TikTok has been able to catch the attention of millions of smartphone users worldwide even with some very stringent censoring and other political roadblocks across several countries. The United States and India are among some of the more popular cases of moves to stymie the growth and expansion of the platform. That notwithstanding, TikTok has just announced that it now has more than 1 billion active users worldwide. This comes barely a month after it dethroned Facebook as the world’s most downloaded social media app.
TikTok has drawn some stringent flak from Washington on suspicion of its strong links to the Chinese government. There have been some strong concerns about the data protection and privacy of users within the platform. The US government suspects that TikTok could be a conduit through which Beijing spies on American citizens in particular. The tensions however thawed with the arrival of the Biden administration, thus providing fodder for the rapid expansion of TikTok in the US. TikTok remains the flagship platform for short, incisive videos. Instagram, YouTube, and several other platforms have also tried to incorporate the short video model in their operations with varying degrees of success.
The growth of these platforms can really be a fluid process of ups and downs. Instagram achieved the 1 billion users milestone back in 2018 but has struggled to maintain such high standards in recent times. TikTok, therefore, has its job well cut out as it continues to push the bar higher in terms of active users. Whether it continues on the upward trajectory or goes south, time will tell.
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