Social Media has played a pivotal role in the ever-changing digital landscape of the society. As the trend tells us so, there seems to be a Social Media platform that defines a generation. For this particular generation, there’s tiktok. A groundbreaking social media platform that integrates its competitors’ Unique Selling Point and builds on it with their own features.
Tiktok was established in September of 2016 by Zhang Yiming, a chinese billionaire and CEO of ByteDance. Although it was distributed in China during its first year, Tiktok made its international debut in 2017, and reaching U.S shores in 2018 after merging with another musically-inclined social media platform of the past, Musical.ly.
The mobile app’s interface is quite simple. Your home tab is divided in two parts: Your “Following” tab is composed of the content creators that you have followed. On the other hand, “For You” page is a mix of user-made content with the tag “#fyp”. In short, it is a hodge podge of content from various content creators from all around the world.
Tiktok by the Numbers
Oberlo reports that there are over 800 million daily Tiktok users in the world in 2020. 150 Million of these come from China. This places Tiktok 9th in the world among Social Media Sites, behind giants Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. The amazing part? It’s just Tiktok’s fourth year in the market.
In Januray 2020, Barron’s reported that Tiktok earned as much as $177 Million in revenue for 2019. 71% of the total earnings during Tiktok’s first few years in the market. Of its 1.3 Billion downloads, almost 700 million were from late 2019.
So how does Tiktok earn money? How do the content creators earn money?
Inside the application, there is an in-app currency which could be purchased using real money. These are called coins. These coins could then be used in purchasing virtual gifts for your chosen content creator. These virtual gifts could in turn be given to you when you livestream in your profile, a benefit for content creators who have reached at least one thousand followers.
The creators of tiktok have created the “Diamond Program”, a way for these content creators to convert the gifts they receive into diamonds. To roughly summarize how it works: Content creators could convert the gifts they receive into diamonds which are half of the value of its coins. If they are able to get at least $100 worth of diamonds, they could cash out half of what they earned. This is because Tiktok retains half of your earnings when you cash out. Effectively, this means you get one fourth of what your fans have spent on your gift.
Tiktok is just starting. If it keeps its pace up and continues to innovate features tailored to its user base; its revenues and value will exponentially grow in no time.
Let us note that when Bezos started Amazon.com, no one believed he would still be operating months after he started. Our society is extremely different from what it was in the 1990’s. We are yet to unleash the power that technology awaits, and Jeff Bezos could be working on it momentarily.
