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Chinese Video Sensation TikTok Surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in Downloads Last Month (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the stranger-things dept.

An app you may have never heard about is growing at an impressive rate. From a report: Beijing-based ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of tween and teen-focused social app Musical.ly is paying off. The company this year merged Musical.ly with its own short video app TikTok as a means of entering the U.S. market. Today, the result of that merger is sitting at the top of the U.S. App Store, ahead of Facebook. More importantly, it recently surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in monthly installs for the first time in September.

According to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, TikTok's installs were higher than those of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in the U.S. last month. It surpassed the four other apps in terms of daily downloads on September 29, with 29.7 percent the downloads from this cohort of apps, the firm says. Further reading: China's King of Internet Fluff Wants to Conquer the World.

33 comments

  1. All right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like a great place to post my Falun Gong and Free Tibet videos!

    1. Re:All right! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Sounds like a great place to post my Falun Gong and Free Tibet videos!

      Do they let Americans sign up for this? If so, Republicans who stick to domestic topics the Chinese don't care about can use Tik-Tok as an alternative to the Facebook 1984 they have been ejected from.

    2. Re:All right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stop calling White Supremacists "Republicans", it's shitty and most Republicans are not Nazis or even particularly racist.

    3. Re:All right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How have you missed all the cringey tiktok memes?

    4. Re:All right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How have you missed all the cringey tiktok memes?

      By not having tiktok?

    5. Re: All right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up you fucking nazi.

  2. News! by Lije+Baley · · Score: 4, Informative

    Country with most people has largest number of people doing something!

    --
    Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
    1. Re:News! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also new things get more downloads. I don't need to download the Facebook app, I did years ago (and since deleted it too)

    2. Re:News! by Daralantan · · Score: 1

      Also new things get more downloads. I don't need to download the Facebook app, I did years ago (and since deleted it too)

      This, plus the fact that I think facebook is on most smart phones by default anyway? As is youtube? And probably the same for those other social media apps. Kind of hard to post stellar download numbers when you're installed by default. (or does it count update downloads too?)

  3. Cut China off the net. Let them have their own. by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My firewalls and NIDS sure would thank you. If they have such a wonderful setup over there, why not just make the "Great Wall" the Great Cliff and just go ahead and fuck off forever? The rest of the internet would be cheering for joy, trust me.

    1. Re:Cut China off the net. Let them have their own. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't whinge to us about it. If you don't like a world-wide internet, why don't you just go off and start your own? Then you could disconnect whoever you want.

    2. Re:Cut China off the net. Let them have their own. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The People's Proxy should just cut the cord from rest the 'net. A real timesaver for all the nannies and filters and spyware and port sniffers etc. Maybe at this point its a jobs program over there.

    3. Re:Cut China off the net. Let them have their own. by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0

      How did this racist "yellow peril" bullshit get modded up?

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. Like all of China's success stories... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This one has a very Happy Ending!

  5. Cringey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That Tik Tok / Musical.ly stuff is so cringey.

  6. In other words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A brand new app has more installs than apps that nearly everyone already has installed? Not to completely dismiss it, but I'm not sure this news is as big as they think it is.

    1. Re:In other words... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Not to completely dismiss it, but I'm not sure this news is as big as they think it is."

      In other news: A sack of rice has fallen over.

  7. Seems risky... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They've been spamming ads for it on YouTube. The ads themselves don't really explain what the app is for nor do they demonstrate, all the while having attractive young females doing things that vaguely imply sexual activity.

    How long before someone in power realizes that this is essentially a petri dish for self-shot underage porn, and likely therefore becomes a target for pedos?

    1. Re: Seems risky... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      How long before someone in power realizes that this is essentially a petri dish for self-shot underage porn, and likely therefore becomes a target for pedos?

      Come on now. Trump is sexually attracted to hookers, not children (well, at least not children that aren't his)

  8. Growth != size by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    New app has more new people joining per week (because almost nobody has it yet) than established players (because almost everybody already has it).

    That is either malicious clickbait or an incompetent journalist.

  9. that's nice but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >Beijing-based ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of tween and teen-focused social app Musical.ly is paying off. The company this year merged Musical.ly with its own short video app TikTok as a means of entering the U.S. market.
    what the hell does any of that mean

  10. Re: Cut China off the net. Let them have their own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Feel free to cut yourselves off, the world won't miss you.

  11. I could take it or leave it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But the animated watermark it adds to everything is extremely annoying.

  12. what are the numbers saying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a new app no one has installed surpasses mature apps where almost everyone who wants the app already has it installed - so what is this saying exactly? what does that number mean?

  13. You dont say by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

    I am shocked that a new app in a new market has a higher rate of new downloads than several already entrenched apps.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  14. TikTok had a 29 percent engagement rate, compared by ttmarket · · Score: 1

    According to Techcrunch: 'Apptopia said TikTok had a 29 percent engagement rate, compared with Facebook’s 96 percent, Instagram’s 95 percent, Snapchat’s 95 percent and YouTube’s 95 percent.'..... -- According to me, my engagement rates on all those apps are definitely 0 percent.

  15. Monthly Installs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How many people actually go and download apps like youtube? It is generally preinstalled on most phones. Not to mention most of those apps are at saturation, most everyone who wants them already has long since had them installed. So its not a huge metric to hurah over. Total installs that are actively used would be a better metric.

  16. FUCK YOU NAZI APOLOGIST SCUMBAG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ARE YOU HIGH? THIS GOP HAS GONE FULL FUCKING NAZI. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/413601-steve-king-members-of-nazi-linked-party-in-austria-would-be-republicans-if /
    https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walker-arthur-jones-republicans-illinois-north-carolina-virginia

    1. Re: FUCK YOU NAZI APOLOGIST SCUMBAG by bkedersha · · Score: 0

      Then the Democratic party ðYZ is full of communist â scum, ready to launch purges and kill millions

    2. Re: FUCK YOU NAZI APOLOGIST SCUMBAG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know where to start, nazi faggot.

  17. Fear not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    FUD campaing will begin soon, and tiktok will be no more

  18. As advertised in Opera by EETech1 · · Score: 1

    I use the Opera mobile browser, and they have been embedding ads for Tik Tok in in the news reader.

    I wonder if the two companies are related?