TikTok becomes the most downloaded mobile app in the world

The popular short-form video platform TikTok has now become the most downloaded mobile app in the world, overtaking applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. According to a new report, the Chinese short video app beat the graph as it earned the most number of downloads all through 2020.

A global survey of downloads in 2020 shows TikTok, a video-sharing app created in China, on top of the list of social media providers for the first time since the study was first led in 2018. TikTok was the world’s most downloaded app in 2020 as it took the best position from Facebook Messenger, as per digital analytics organization App Annie.

The Chinese video-sharing platform is the just application not owned by Facebook to make the global top five of downloads.

As worry for personal privacy develops, Telegram, a messaging app that can delete posts, likewise ranked high during a year when social media use has been driven up by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its home country, TikTok’s proprietor ByteDance additionally holds the best position with the Chinese language video app Douyin.

TikTok’s proceeded with popularity rose even after former US President Donald Trump attempted to ban it in America.

Facebook-owned apps have held the best position since the survey began in 2018 and the organization actually dominated the chart.

Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant represented the rest of the top five with Facebook’s flagship app as well as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger all showing up.

List of 10-most download apps in 2020:

1. TikTok (China)

2. Facebook (US)

3. WhatsApp (US)

4. Instagram (US)

5. Facebook Messenger (US)

6. Snapchat (US)

7. Telegram (Russia)

8. Likee (China)

9. Pinterest (US)

10. Twitter (US)

ByteDance launched the international version of TikTok in 2017 and has since overwhelmed Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger – which are all Facebook-owned – in downloads, even in the U.S.

“I enjoy videos by artists who aren’t performing live anymore because of the pandemic,” said Nina, 37, of Portland in the U.S.

The development in the TikTok numbers was being driven by a combination of factors that incorporated the Covid global pandemic that prompted lockdowns across the world for extended periods in 2020. This saw a surge in the usage of the short video sharing platform between a demographically different population containing a great many Gen Z users, as well as Millenials and surprisingly older persons irrespective of gender. The development of TikTok was additionally sped up by the change in concentration by the US government which had recently restricted TikTok and WeChat during the Trump Presidency. Nonetheless, the boycott was renounced by the Biden government, in this manner adding to the TikTok numbers from the US.

Some believe that personal data shared with TikTok isn’t secure. In 2020, previous President Donald Trump approached the organization to auction its U.S. operations or be banned. The application’s popularity by the by developed during the pandemic, when it became the leading download in Europe, South America, and the U.S.

Last year, then, at that point President Donald Trump issued an executive order to boycott new downloads of the TikTok app in the US.

The Trump organization claimed that TikTok represented a national safety hazard as the Chinese government had access to its user data. The organization repeatedly denied the charges.

A likely deal to determine the issue that would have seen parent organization ByteDance selling part of its US business to US technology giant Oracle and retailer Walmart was given the tentative green light from Mr. Trump however was never approved by the Chinese government.

Since becoming US President in January this year Joe Biden has removed Mr. Trump’s executive order.

As well as seeing off that challenge in the US the organization has been investigating better approaches to attract users.

Last week, it arose that TikTok is testing a new vanishing clips feature like functions on Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram.

TikTok Stories will permit clients to see content posted by accounts they follow for 24 hours before they are deleted.

It came after WhatsApp carried out a feature for clients to post photographs or videos that disappear after they are seen.

Joe Biden, Trump’s replacement, pulled out the presidential executive order, however, vulnerabilities remain somewhere else. While The Financial Times wrote about Sunday that ByteDance has resuscitated plans to open up to the world in the coming months, a representative revealed to Nikkei Asia on Monday that the article was “inaccurate,” demanding the organization has no current plans for a stock market listing.

China’s Likee, a TikTok competitor, makes short videos that many organizations use for marketing, and it positioned eighth in the latest global download league.

Toward the beginning of 2021, WhatsApp reported that it would share messaging information to Facebook identifying with connections between clients and organizations. Even though WhatsApp vowed to ensure data about communications between loved ones, a few clients moved over to other apps.

Resisting that trend, Telegram, a messaging app initially developed in Russia however presently situated in Germany, climbed to the seventh spot. Clients can change the settings to delete messages automatically after a specified period. The application was a specific hit with protesters in Hong Kong and Thailand who wanted to work under the state radar.

Clients have previously been for the most part directed by the accommodation and convenience of free social media, yet privacy has become a greater extent a worry of late. “Companies’ approach to handling data will become a deciding factor in consumer choices,” Shinichi Yamaguchi, an associate professor at the Center for Global Communications, told Nikkei.

Discord, a voice calling app that climbed to the seventh spot, has profited with individuals’ need to isolate during the pandemic. The app is popular among gamers for chatting when online and has been funded by Sony Group. Social media services have primed the pump for more prominent external investment and corporate involvement.

Domestic apps dominate the China market where numerous from abroad are finished off. Three in China’s top ten are for short video posting, including Douyin, the predecessor of TikTok, which ByteDance actually gives in China.

Douyin is famous for music, dancing, and general entertainment content. Douyin Volcano Edition – likewise from ByteDance – gives videos from everyday life, incorporating individuals falling in the road and different accidents.

Tencent’s WeShow focuses on video games and incorporates celebrities playing games live.

Among newbies, Little Red Book (RED, Xiaohongshu) was the fifth most downloaded. It consolidates social networking with e-commerce, mainly cosmetics, fashion, dietary supplements, and consumer goods. In China, word-of-mouth is significant, particularly among ladies. “I read reviews of cosmetics and other products every day,” said a female user in Beijing.

Online networking is especially popular among Generation Z, or Zoomers, born in the second half of the 1990s. Soul, the number ten app, uses artificial intelligence to break down clients’ personalities through psychological tests. It then, at that point matches them to others with comparable profiles. A significant contrast from traditional matchmaking services is that individuals are not selected dependent on the image of their face. Consumers use the app for matchmaking or just to discover new friends.

Short videos have acquired fame in different parts of Asia. Snack Video, an app from China’s Kuaishou, was the 6th most downloaded in Asia-Pacific. Its main feature is live commerce – a combination of video broadcasting and online shopping. Organizations have used it to develop sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Line, which is particularly famous in Thailand, was pushed out of the global rankings by strong competition from new players. In Japan, notwithstanding, it moved from number two to the top spot. The line is working to make itself a super application by upgrading its payment settlement function.

During the pandemic, Osaka prefectural authorities used Line for vaccine reservations, and it is broadly used by other local governments in Japan to disseminate data, making it progressively a part of the infrastructure of daily. Notwithstanding, a subcontractor in China was found to have the option to see Japanese user information, making security to a greater extent a worry.

The U.S. matchmaking app Pairs was initially developed in Japan, where it rose to the eighth spot. With the pandemic ongoing, it offers a remote dating function that was included in April 2020 to enable individuals to keep up with romantic links from home. “I started using the service because I couldn’t have any real encounters with people during the pandemic,” said one male office worker in his twenties.

“The total viewing time for TikTok in the U.S. and U.K. is longer than that for YouTube, and short videos will continue to attract attention,” Chuzen Kin, marketing manager at App Annie, an app market intelligence company, told Nikkei as he reviewed trends. “In terms of content, music and comedies are becoming more popular.” Vocal social media is likewise on the up, with Clubhouse taking off in Japan and the U.S. in mid-2021.

The very short videos on offer with TikTok were loaded with energy, education, entertainment, and a whole lot of different activities that have been basically attractive. The extremely fast, snappy videos, loaded with compact data and entertainment. The videos are somewhere in the range of 9 and 15 seconds, and another expansion could now see videos reaching out as long as 3 minutes.

The TikTok achievement has drawn correlations with some comparable applications that have come on stream like Instagram Reels, and YouTube shorts. It stays an outlet post-pandemic that has become a fertile ground for artists, using the platform to ventilate their views and talents. While most of the social media platforms keep on grapple with privacy and encryption issues, TikTok apparently keeps on blooming even without these controls.

Until 2021, Facebook had held that title—unsurprisingly, as it has by one way or another figured out how to continue to develop throughout the years up to a current amassed net worth of more than 1,000 billion. TikTok has demonstrated to be something of a dark horse behind the scenes, in any case, developing throughout the world at an unprecedented rate until it’s taken over social media—and most of Gen Z’s free time.

TikTok has begun a totally different trend of video style, which has been gotten by a few fellow social media applications over the previous year.

While YouTube has likewise been changing the video scene over time, with the most popular videos right now extending around ten minutes—miles shorter than traditional TV or video entertainment—TikTok has been making ready for something totally new: very fast, smart videos averaging between nine to fifteen seconds (even though TikTok expanded the maximum length to three minutes in July).

In the beginning, most TikToks were speedy, funny clips pointed toward making you smile or laugh, something likened to Vine when it topped in 2014 preceding it passed into oblivion. TikTok isn’t giving indications of dying anytime soon, however, and its style has extended to incorporate educational clips, life hacks, mini cooking tutorials, and significantly more.

The possibilities have become endless, and thousands of businesses have taken benefit to advertise their products or services as well as give entertainment.

TikTok has even been inspiring different platforms to mimic its style, after seeing its popularity blast—like Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts. Both of these have been pushed as extra short-video platforms close by the main platform, which give a refreshing option in contrast to the regular content most established influencers or YouTubers are accustomed to posting and consuming.

Instagram Reels is different from Instagram Stories, displayed in their own niche corner in the application, and YouTube Shorts can be found on the Shorts Shelf directly close to the top of the home page.

For some time last year, we didn’t actually think TikTok planned to make it in the US after Trump had taken steps to annihilate the application from the United States because of a claimed national security risk. Things didn’t exactly work out the way Trump had trusted, however, and albeit new application downloads were banned for some time, Biden signed an executive order this year disavowing all bans on both Tiktok and WeChat (another Chinese messaging application targeted by Trump).

As per NikkeiAsia’s report, the pandemic served to give a huge lift to TikTok’s popularity, as not only were the vast majority stuck at home with limited means of entertainment, yet additionally because numerous famous artists were forced to cancel shows and tours, and decided to take to this platform (and others) instead.

Curiously, TikTok has never promoted specific security features, many actually harbor worries that their information might be compromised. In any case, that doesn’t appear to have affected the application’s fame in the least, disregarding other applications like WhatsApp hard to stay above contending platforms as far as maximal information encryption and privacy. Obviously, if an application is adequately entertaining, privacy concerns take a back seat for some clients.

Besides, ByteDance, the parent organization of TikTok, has added a few new features including TikTok Stories to bait clients and further extend the client base. So indeed, going ahead, we can expect that TikTok should top the chart as it keeps on gathering new clients for its short-video platform.