It’s been the platform of the Zoomer generation but when did TikTok actually first become a thing? Let’s investigate…
TikTok already feels like it has been around forever, however that could well be down to the insufferable “challenges” that continue to spout from it.
It does of course offer some genuinely enjoyable content though, which, while I don’t have it myself, must be true based on the sheer number of people that are using it.
The social media, video creation and sharing platform has over a billion users worldwide, so in this case, I will accept that my perceptions of the service could well just be based on my millennial hatred of new things.
So, while it does feel like it has been around for at least a decade now, let’s get the facts right… when did TikTok come out?
When Did TikTok Come Out?
TikTok was initially released to the Chinese market in 2016, however it wasn’t until it merged with Musical.ly in 2018 that it became available in markets all around the globe.
This means that “when TikTok came out” depends on where in the world you’re residing.
Chinese residents that still use the service under the name of Douyin will have known of this platform since 2016. The rest of the world will not have known of the service until it was released as TikTok a few years later, even if they had previously been using Musical.ly beforehand.
TikTok was released to the global market in early 2018, which is when you started seeing strange videos of teenagers lip-syncing and dancing outside moving vehicles. It has since been available in 150 different countries and is available in 75 different languages.
Who Created TikTok?
TikTok was created after the merger of Douyin and Musical.ly in 2018, which was conducted by its parent company, which we have already briefly mentioned, ByteDance.
ByteDance is a Chinese tech conglomerate that owns several other tech-based services that there is a chance you could have heard of, including Toutiao, Xigua Video, Helo and Lark.
ByteDance was founded by Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and their team way back in 2012, however they have accomplished a hell of a lot during this decade of existence. It faces off against other major Chinese tech players like Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba.
The AI-powered “Toutiao” or “Jinri Toutiao”, one of its earliest offerings, is one of China’s best-known media websites and is believed to have been set up on hundreds of millions of devices.
Another early app called Neihan Dianzi, which allowed users to exchange jokes via texts, videos, and memes, was unfortunately taken down in 2018 by Chinese censors, however this was not enough to prevent the company from going on to create more entertainment-based apps like, well, TikTok.
Jake McEvoy
Jake is a professional copywriter, journalist, and life-long fan of technology. He covers news and user guides for KnowYourMobile.
