TikTok has over a billion users
TikTok has reached the milestone of one billion monthly users. The app, which is owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, announced the news today via a blog post. Since July 2020, the app has attracted 300 million new monthly users.
The app was already large before the pandemic, initially with videos of no more than 15 seconds of mainly dances. Later, the maximum length was expanded to first one and then three minutes to compete with the other major video app, YouTube.
While TikTok was able to take advantage of the stay-at-home obligations during the coronavirus pandemic, YouTube stayed a safe distance ahead, with some 2.3 billion monthly users in 2020.
TikTok underlines its position as the only online platform of non-US origin with a global audience. Last year, former US President Trump threatened to ban the app in order to force a sale of its US operations to US investors. A US court eventually defused that threat.
