FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE GROWTH IN USERBASE OF TIK TOK: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Abstract

TikTok is a video sharing social networking service /mobile application . It is owned by Bytedance , which first launched it as Douyin in 2016 and merged it with musical.ly in 2017 and relaunched it as TikTok . Musical.ly was a similar app started by two entrepreneurs in 2014 . Within two years TikTok has achieved a userbase of 800million active users in just two years and is number 7 in the list . Facebook tops the list with 2.5 billion users that is three times the TikTok user base . Facebook has been in existence for around 14 years . Instagram at number six position has one billion active users and it also started ten years ago . Whatsapp at number three , Facebook messenger at number four and Wechat and number five are mobile texting apps and not a network in itself . Facebook messenger also borrows the userbase of Facebook . That leaves Youtube at number two , with one billion users . It is around for fifteen years . Reddit and Twitter are behind TikTok and with roughly 400 million users One can now very clearly infer that within three years of starting , TikTok has made its place in the market leaders and has threatened the legacy build by its competitors over a decade . This , apart from appreciation , calls for study , so that insights can be drawn in respect to business environment of entertainment sector , strategies employed by firm to excel , identifying untapped market opportunities and sustaining and consumer behavior .