TikTok
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin (Chinese: 抖音; pinyin: Dǒuyīn: Shaking sound), is a short-form video hosting service owned by ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes.
Screenshot Screenshot of TikTok.com homepage | |
| Developer(s) | ByteDance |
|---|---|
| Initial release | September 2016 (in China and India only) |
| Operating system |
|
| Predecessor | musical.ly |
| Available in | 40 languages |
List of languages
| |
| Type | Video sharing |
| License | Proprietary software with Terms of Use |
| Website | tiktok |
Screenshot Screenshot of Douyin.com homepage | |||||||||
| Developer(s) | Beijing Microlive Vision Technology Co., Ltd | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial release | 20 September 2016 | ||||||||
| Stable release(s) | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Operating system |
| ||||||||
| Available in | Simplified Chinese, English | ||||||||
| Type | Video sharing | ||||||||
| License | Proprietary software with Agreement | ||||||||
| Website | douyin | ||||||||
| Douyin | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese | 抖音 | ||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "Vibrating sound" | ||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Since their launches, TikTok and Douyin have gained global popularity. In October 2020, TikTok surpassed 2 billion mobile downloads worldwide. Morning Consult named TikTok the third-fastest growing infotech brand of 2020, after Zoom and Peacock. Cloudflare ranked TikTok the most popular website of 2021, surpassing Google. TikTok's popularity has resulted in the platform having an increasing cultural impact worldwide.
Several countries have restricted, banned, or attempted to ban the use of TikTok due to national security concerns that user data could be collected by the Chinese government, children's safety, addictiveness, terrorism, antisemitism, toxic content, misinformation, and mental health.