TikTok’s creator, Zhang Yiming, set out to create a new platform unlike anything else on the market. The history of TikTok starts with him.
“We are not a copycat of a U.S. company, both in product and technology,” said Yiming in a recent interview with Bloomberg. TikTok found a niche in today’s social media landscape, not an easy feat by any means. But just what path did TikTok take to becoming one of the leading apps on user’s phone screens today?
Yiming is the founder of the Chinese company ByteDance. In 2012, he founded the company and in 2016, launched TikTok, known as Douyin in China.
The creators decided to enter the short-form video market in a different way than a lot of their competitors – with full screen videos. Kelly Zhang, the original head of Douyin, explained this decision, “Actually the video shot via the phone’s built-in camera is in full screen. So now that we’re making a short video mobile app, why don’t we showcase videos in its original style?”
ByteDance wasn’t the first app to do this though.
Screenshot from Dubsmash app
Another app created in China called Musical.ly had been using this form since 2015. This app was not performing as well in Chinese markets as Douyin was, but it was doing great in the United States. Muiscal.ly had reached the No. 1 app spot on iTunes and continued to stay in the top 40.
While Musical.ly was becoming more and more popular in the United States, Douyin was going global after ByteDance’s decision to bring it outside of China’s Great Firewall in 2017.
ByteDance as a company had one thing Musical.ly did not – an incredible algorithm. The first app Yiming created for his company was called Toutiao, which means “Headlines” in Chinese. This app is a news and information platform, specifically designed to be powered by AI combined with user-interest.
Ziming’s plan from the start of creating the algorithm was to let the app form around the user. He explained, “Personalized recommendation is not actually a recommendation for each individual, but essentially a collaborative recommendation. We recommend content to people who have similar characteristics as each other.”
When working on Douyin, ByteDance used Toutiao’s already well-performing algorithm to create an app similar to Musical.ly. Kelly Zhang explained that the AI aspect of Douyin wasn’t a problem during the creation because, “Personalized recommendation is indeed what Toutiao knows best.”
In 2017, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly and merged it with Douyin by 2018. The combined apps were rebranded as one worldwide app – TikTok. It went on to surpass the success of either of the previous apps.
TikTok has done what many others have tried to do. It has found a permanent space on people’s screens alongside the other social media giants like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
If you frequent TikTok, you know that it’s much more than what Musical.ly was. It’s not just an app to watch people lip-sync and dance (while there’s still plenty of that content around if you’re looking for it).
In present day, TikTok is a world in its own. As you scroll your For You page, you might first see a video that is so specific to your life that it amazes you. Next, a story from someone across the world that helps you understand their culture more deeply. Then a how-to video explaining whatever it is that you specifically want to know about – maybe a recipe, a hairstyle, a car fix hack. All within 5 minutes.
“It makes you realize that the world is a very big place, and it expands your horizons. It makes our life much more interesting,” said Yiming.
He set out to create a new platform unlike anything else on the market, and that he did.
