Platform Feature: TikTok

About the Platform.
TikTok is a destination for short-form mobile videos. Our mission is to capture and present the world's creativity, knowledge, and moments that matter, directly from the mobile phone.

TikTok enables everyone to be a creator and encourages users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos. TikTok is based in Los Angeles, with global offices in London, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Jakarta, Mumbai, and Moscow. In early 2018, TikTok was one of the most downloaded apps in the world. TikTok is available worldwide for iOS and Android. Visit tiktok.com.

Whom do we cater to?

TikTok provides its users with locally curated content and a vibrant global community of creative users. India is an aspirational market and as mobile internet penetration continues to increase, we hope to reach out to all those who would want to showcase their creativity.

Recently, consumption of short video content has gained popularity and we believe that TikTok’s diversified and multi-format content is able to address this growing demand. We are witnessing a growing trend among the general public eager to express themselves through new and creative outlets and find that they have a strong desire to share the latest events in their lives with others.

What do we offer to our consumers

TikTok incorporates technology to provide unique in-app features such as video and image recognition, 3D stickers, various filters, video shooting and editing tools and more. Through this, creators can make 15-second videos within minutes and share them with their friends, family, fans and the worldwide TikTok community.

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Apart from this, TikTok offers customized content feeds to an individual’s preferences; delivering fresh content about topics and trends they will find most interesting.

In India, we design tailor-made local content especially for our Indian users and aim to provide a localized and interactive product experience. We also keep the user community engaged by designing in-app challenges and new topics, especially for Indian creators. For example, TikTok (including musical.ly) has held the One Million Audition campaign four times. The challenge is a grand competition – one the largest worldwide, inviting all Indian users to show their amazing talents on TikTok. For the fourth audition, we received entries from over 200,000 participants and over 350,000 videos were shared.

Moreover, to generate high-quality content for our creators, we have also dived deep into the Indian culture. From working with some of Bollywood’s finest celebrities such as Shahid Kapoor, Tiger Shroff, Jacqueline Fernandez, to name a few, to partnering with movies like Jagga Jasoos and Race 3 to provide content, we will keep working on various opportunities that excite and engage our users.

What motivated us to start up?

Mobile internet is developing rapidly, and short-videos are not only gaining popularity in the Indian market, but also sees takers globally. We aim to bridge the gap between those that want to showcase their creativeness with a platform is a creative outlet. In addition to user-generated videos, we have also attracted major artists, been instrumental in boosting the careers of many social media influencers and have featured original content from some of the largest entertainment companies.

What's in a name?

TikTok, the sound of a ticking clock, represents the short nature of the video platform. We want to capture the world’s creativity and knowledge under this name and remind everyone to treasure every precious life moment. Like our slogan says, we believe in making every second count.

How do we see Social Media?

Social media has redesigned the way society works, whether it is sharing an idea, communicating with each other or carrying out simple day-to-day activities. Social media is now in almost every part of our lives. It has made this small word even smaller as the content is practically on-demand on our phone screens. When we are not consuming content in some form, we are pushing it out in one way or the other.

We also see a lot of opportunities to generate and share excitement through content discovery and short-video platform such as TikTok.

Currently we are....

TikTok is a leading short video platform and has established itself as one of the world's fastest growing app globally. With a vibrant and enthusiastic users base, TikTok is popular in the Indian market. During the first part of this year, the app ranked 1st in both Google Play and iOS overall free apps.

Our biggest challenge was..

The industry is dynamic and changes fast. The users also change with it. We are pleased to see the positive response the app has received and the popularity that it has gained among users worldwide within a short span of time.

We are constantly working towards providing a great product experience to the millions of users of TikTok. We are also continuously working towards ensuring that we have a healthy and thriving community of creators. That is our long-term focus.

We want to dominate the world by..

We want to continue to establish ourselves as the go-to app for short video content and expand our vibrant community of users globally. At TikTok, we believe in making each moment count and that is exactly what have been doing and will do for our users- providing them with a platform which gives them a creative outlet for sharing their life’s moments with the global community.

We’re making moolah by...

Currently our focus is on our product. We want to continuously provide fresh, novel features on TikTok and serve our users with an excellent online experience. We are actively exploring models and opportunities to create value for TikTok creators and our business partners as well.

The content available online has become increasingly diversified over the years. Taking this into consideration, we view advertising as one of the formats of content, which should also be of high quality and enjoyable for our users. We believe that advertisements are one of the ways to monetize, and TikTok is exploring and developing novel advertising products to create a mutually beneficial business model for both, brand and our users.

Our What The **** Moment

The response we have received from the TikTok users in India for our in-app challenges like the Dame Tu Co Sita (#DanceWithAlien) challenge, #Duet challenge and the One Million Audition challenge has been quite overwhelming! We were not expecting it to be such a rage and we continue to see ongoing love and support from TikTok users.

Industry as we foresee

There is no doubt about the fact that short video content is gaining popularity. As mobile internet penetration increases in India, the consumption of short video content has also increased.

Short-form videos give users more freedom and flexibility to produce content that is captivating. Given the dynamic nature of this platform, there is great scope for its growth in India in the coming years.

Lastly, Are you hiring?

We are always looking for new talent and intend to expand our local team in the future.