Marketing News

What’s going on with TikTok?

TikTok is described by Mark Zuckerberg as the single biggest threat to Facebook. Maybe rightfully so, but the app has a very long way to go. Attracting users is not enough to run a viable business model.

TikTok has struggled to find the right advertizing modes (or not really tried at all just yet). And the target demographic of the app is very very young. A challenge also faced by Snapchat a couple of years back, and they have been on a bit of a rollercoaster, too. I get it, TikTok is fun, it is creative and it is spontaneous.

It is the single best things since Vine came out with its 6 second quick clips. There is nothing not to love about the silly video clips you find on TikTok. But that is also the biggest challenge of the service. It is fun, but that is basically it.

Unless TikTok manages to create a voice, a long term use case (such as Instagram has done as a great platform to portrait and communicate a company’s brand image), it might be a hard sell.

TikTok is the new and cool kid in town. Everybody wants a piece of it, and nobody really knows how to use it, systematically and authentically. I hope larger advertizers stay away from the platform for another year or two to give it a shot at creating its own identity. The content is great, but the platform needs more to thrive in the future.

TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users and is dominating the App Store. TikTok lets users easily share short funny clips which can go viral really easily. But TikTok has been criticized by US senators for censorship, privacy, and child safety.

Source: What’s going on with TikTok?