For a long time, Facebook has dominated as the king of social media platforms; no one expected such a small man to dethrone him as quickly as he is doing. Yes, Facebook still has the most users, but TikTok is expected to overtake it shortly. 

Tiktok, The New Big Man

TikTok has quickly become the fastest growing social media platform for short video creation, sharing, and discovery with over 1.39 billion monthly active users and a projected 1.8 billion by the end of 2022. Over 3 billion people have downloaded TikTok.

The globe has 4.8 Billion internet users, and TikTok is used by 20.83 percent of them.

In terms of (Monthly Active Users) MAUs, TikTok has overtaken Twitter, Telegram, Reddit, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

Over 1 billion videos are watched every day on Tiktok.

The app allows young people to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing, It enables users to create and share videos with others. 

Short videos provide the system with information about our behaviours much faster, allowing the system to process large amounts of data in a short time. The platform helps in creating compelling short-form content while easily gathering everything they need to personalize the user’s experience. Everyone benefits from this type of content: users, creators, and the platform itself. As users, we can consume large amounts of personalized content in a short time. As a creator, breaking longer content into smaller chunks increases their discovery and helps to build an audience. Short videos also allow apps to get the data they need faster, allowing them to customize the app’s experience and algorithms better.

The Big Man and others

With Tiktok’s success in the FYP— making it the fastest growing social media platform with 2 billion downloads within 4 years in 2020, other platforms realised they needed to implement features that engaged their users with short-form video content to stay in the trend.

Instagram with Insta Reels, Snapchat with Spotlight, Youtube with YouTube shorts, and Pinterest with idea pins adjusting their focus putting interest graphics ahead of social graphics.

Instagram Reels

Instagram is on a mission to take over Tiktok.

Instagram Reels allows you to make entertaining short videos in less than 90 seconds. The feature is available in more than 50 countries as of 2020, but its duration is limited to 15 seconds. When Titok realized the competition ahead it had to increase its duration from 30 seconds to 60 seconds and now to 90 seconds. For Instagram to beat Tiktok’s challenge it had to move from sharing pictures on its feed to flooding feed reels. It became very obvious that Instagram was copying Tiktok and that people just had to speak up.

YouTube shorts

YouTube, the supposed king of long-form video content, is taking precautionary measures with Youtube short. YouTube shorts was first introduced in 2020, and it is a short-form video-sharing platform offered by YouTube. The feature hosts user content much like YouTube’s primary service but limits pieces to 60 seconds in length.

Youtube brought out this feature when it discovered the traffic TikTok was pulling with its full-screen short video. YouTube shots happen in full screen too.

The idea behind Youtube short is to give users a shorter form of content while still having some kind of interaction with the video itself which makes it more engaging for those who are just scrolling on their feed and might not have time to watch anything yet want something meaningful enough that they’ll scroll down to see what’s going on below them before moving on, the same algorithm as TikTok

Snapchat Spotlight

Video communication and sharing was created by Snapchat and has been known for its success since its creation. The Snapchat Spotlight feature, similar to TikTok, is a dedicated tab in the Snapchat app that promotes viral short videos from the Snapchat community. We knew Snapchat to be for sending snaps to close friends and relations, since Snapchat discovered The Big man’s successful algorithm they had to invent this feature in late 2020. Snapchat has 293 million daily active users in 2022 with 4 billion snaps sent per day

Pinterest Idea Pin 

Pinterest Idea Pin was introduced on Pinterest in September 2020. This feature gives users feed 20 pages of videos (a concept from TikTok), images, and text. With idea pin, users can interact with content by adding comments, reactions, or taking to an Idea with Pinterest creating a relationship between creator users and the platform. Pinterest idea pin can now share their ideas with other users who might want to see them or create something related to it. The idea pin is also a new way for creators to monetize their content, as people are likelier to buy things after seeing them on social media.

Tiktok and your business

With The New Big Man’s reach and potential, Tiktok can become the most reliable social media marketing platform. Tiktok Influencers help businesses turn their desired marketing into reality without spending too much. The platform easily integrates with other social media platforms to reach more potential customers.

In conclusion, TikTok is a platform you need to watch out for and use its Big Man’s effect on your business. 

The platform may not be for everyone, but the fast-growing social media platform does seem to offer something very unique in the world of social media. From a marketing perspective, it also allows brands to reach users who might not normally pay attention in a way that traditional video content might not achieve. Regardless of its staying power, there’s one thing we do know: TikTok is here to stay.

At TIMA, we’re home to Africa’s most influential creators, connecting brands to millions of Africans around the world.