Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
The Beginnings
Are you on TikTok? Of course you are! Who isn’t on TikTok these days? The app has exploded over the past few years, and now major celebs like Lizzo, Cardi B, and Post Malone count themselves as users! But OG TikTok fans know that it wasn’t always this way. It’s only in the past year or so that the app has gone truly mainstream. In fact, in early 2019 CNN reported that it hit over one billion global users.
Here’s the SCOOP! TikTok was released in 2017, and by 2019 it was the seventh most downloaded app of the decade. That’s a meteoric rise in two years!
TikTok’s true cultural impact became super clear in the beginning of 2020. During Super Bowl LIV in February, Sabra Hummus aired an ad featuring a variety of pop culture figures, including several big TikTok names—dancer Charli D’Amelio, Brittany Tomlinson aka Kombucha Girl, and Zach King, the magician. TikTok even aired its own commercial for the app, and Justin Bieber announced a paid partnership with Chipotle that saw various influencers like David Dobrik making TikToks during the game itself to Justin’s latest song, “Yummy.”
The day after the Super Bowl, the Iowa Democratic caucus was taking place. The Iowa caucus marks the beginning of the US presidential election season. It’s a big deal. And TikTok recognized the opportunity, which led to another huge TikTok moment: Buzzfeed announced they were hiring three “teen ambassadors” to create TikTok news content about the election. This was a paid gig, too. Paid to make TikToks! Can you imagine? Sounds like a dream job to us!
All this goes to show that the power of TikTok is only increasing. Brands are constantly looking for where consumers are, and Gen Z has proven to be super unique compared to generations before. Thanks to access to the internet, and the sheer amount of content on it, it’s been tricky for brands to find out the best way to market to consumers. TikTok presents an obvious major platform that tons of Gen Z’ers use daily.
Buzzfeed has always been on the pulse of youth culture, but between that and the Washington Post’s TikTok accounts, there’s a clear sign that news organizations are trying to find ways to not only get the youth aware of the news, journalism, and politics, but even to get them involved! Of course, it wasn’t always this way. TikTok started out way smaller. It was created by the Chinese company ByteDance, which also made Douyin, the Chinese version of the app.
Here’s the SCOOP! Lots of apps and social media websites have different versions in China due to the Chinese government’s censorship restrictions, which limit what Chinese citizens can access and post on the internet. Since those restrictions don’t exist outside of China, ByteDance decided to make a separate app for the international market that wasn’t beholden to those same standards. That’s TikTok!
Douyin was created in 2016, and quickly became a major deal in China. TikTok was launched by September of the next year. However, in the United States there was already a big-time lip-syncing app that was super popular, called Musical.ly. Sensing an opportunity to capitalize, ByteDance bought Musical.ly for a billion dollars (Yes, you read that right! A billion.) and purchased the app with TikTok in November 2017. That’s when TikTok started to go supernova. Suddenly, the big names of Musical.ly were also the big names on TikTok, and new users started joining in daily. By January 2018 it was one of the most downloaded apps in the country, and new TikTok stars and content creators were going viral across the platform, gaining major traction.
If other social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and YouTube are any indication, then it’s clear that the rising TikTok stars are going to be the mainstream media darlings of tomorrow.
Dancers, actors, cosplayers, comedians, makeup artists, and singers have all embraced the platform, and some of them are already getting huge in major ways. Just before she starred in the Super Bowl commercial of the year, then-fifteen-year-old dancer and creator Charli D’Amelio, her sister, Dixie, and their parents signed with major Hollywood talent agency UTA. UTA plans to take the D’Amelio family big places with new digital content, live touring, and even book and TV deals! Whoa! It seems like soon enough, Charli and Dixie will be more than just TikTok stars.
