TikTok active users
TikTok has officially surpassed 10 billion monthly active users worldwide.
The popularity of this short video app, owned by ByteDance, a Chinese business technology, has exploded since its launch in 2016. As of 2018, TikTok had reported 5.5 million users worldwide, but in 2018/12 it surpassed 271 million, in 2019/12 it surpassed 508 million, and in 2020/7 it surpassed 689 million. In April, Sensor Tower, a mobile application intelligence company, reported as TikTok had more than 20 billion downloads. By comparison, Facebook announced that in 7 months, the number of monthly active users of the company's app group was 3.51 billion an increase of 1 million by 345,000 in the first quarter.
"TikTok is loved as part of the lives of people around the world because of the creativity and reliability of its creators. TikTok global society is characterized by its ability to reach millions of people across generations."
The milestone comes after TikTok was nearly blocked in the US after an August 2020 executive order from the Trump administration. At the time, Trump argued that the app could compromise national security by potentially sharing its users' data in the United States with the Chinese government. Following the government's order, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States launched an investigation into TikTok and issued a formal order requiring ByteDance to hand over the US company by 12 November.
Although TikTok and ByteDance have repeatedly denied the Trump administration's charge and fought off the executive order with a lawsuit a deal was struck to sell the software giant's assets to Oracle However, this deal was later cancelled after President Joe Biden took office and demanded a security review. In June, Biden signed an executive order that would force some Chinese applications to take tougher measures to protect private information if they wanted to remain in the US market.
The achievement also comes as TikTok faces a host of competitors, including Facebook's Instagram Reels, Snapchat's "Spotlight" feature and Google's YouTube Shorts.