TikTok is Exploding in terms of Users – February 2020

Image taken from Wikimedia Commons

I downloaded and started using the TikTok app on Android in January (2020), and I just noticed that after a month its number of users have basically just exploded.

Some of the accounts that I follow like Addison Rae or The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) only had 5 or so million Followers last month, but now when I looked both already has more than 15 million Followers.

Local Show business personalities have also started to open their accounts and make their first few videos in the app, like Maja Salvador, for example, or Heart Evangelista.

The Future is Now
I can’t remember now exactly why I got into TikTok, but once I started I quickly got addicted to it. I would start scrolling the videos on my “For You” screen, and time just flies by, when I look at the time and I’ve been watching the videos for half an hour already.

And not a day goes by nowadays that I don’t check it out at least once. When nothing is good on Cable or I got tired of Netflix, I open TikTok and start scrolling. TikTok I feel is the future of Social Media, and the future now here. There are several reasons why I think this is so:

• Smartphone Centric - You record content or watch the videos almost exclusively on Portrait Mode, which is the easiest and most comfortable way to use your Smartphone. And a lot of people have this these days, people who don’t own Laptop or Desktop Computers have Smartphones.

• Short Content Duration - The videos are no more than a minute long, often they are much less. This means usually only one topic at a time can be covered which gives the videos focus. And the pacing needs to be as fast or as short as possible making for more interesting videos.

• Music - It’s not just the videos, but there a lot of great music that end up being shared on the platform. And they are usually nice to listen to because if not then people simply won’t share them. It is only there that I have heard songs like Death Bed by Powfu for example, or Falling by Trevor Daniel. And there are a LOT more, whenever I hear a nice one I just automatically put bookmark it on my Favorite list.

• A Lot of Content - Because you can just use your Smartphone and the App itself is pretty easy to use when recording Videos, then there are lot of content around being made by ordinary people. It’s not just about dancing girls (although there are a lot of that) nowadays but also Skits, Specialized Content (i.e. Superheroes, United States Navy Seals, etc.), Tutorials, etc., you name it and they probably got it.

In Closing
As of this month TikTok reportedly has already 800 million users, still way behind that of Youtube or Facebook which has over 2 billion users each. But at the rate it is growing, I won't be surprised if it eventually equals or even surpasses those two.

It is already at the heels of Instagram which only has a billion users, and TikTok has been around only since 2017. So here’s to what’s likely the future of Social Media, and it is good to have started using it just as it is starting.