TikTok: How Meme Culture Has Transformed the App

As technology advances, new trends are created – and some of these trends make the world virtually smaller. With that in mind, you’ve probably heard of TikTok.

Social media has changed our lives; it has made the world more interconnected but also allows us to easily find entertainment. Facebook started on a college campus to connect college students, LinkedIn connected the professional community, and TikTok is allowing people to be creative in any way they wish by creating short form videos of up to 60 seconds.

So, what is TikTok and who owns it? TikTok is an app that allows people to create and share short videos, usually featuring music is the background. It provides a framework for people to create. Tiktok is owned by Chinese company Bytedance Inc, which is among the world’s most valuable startups, with an estimated value of $75 billion.

Every social media app has an algorithm and individual pitch to attract, retain, and engage users. Most of us are addicted to some sort of social media, according to Smart Insights, with 90% of young adults in the US actively using social media. Social media sites are businesses that have the aim of generating profits to give the returns their investors are demanding. Therefore, there is a whole lot of research and development that goes into social media sites. Think about it? How else do you think that apps such as TikTok keep their audience addicted? Like any business, social media sites go through a business model. Below is an example of a business model framework.

Apps like TikTok want as many people to spend as much time as possible on the app, because this allows people to see more ads, thus creating more business for TikTok.

The research and development that goes into social media sites is a crucial part of how well that site will perform. Nowadays, amongst millennials and Gen Z, memes are a huge part of life. Memes allow people to connect over common interests, share memories and just be able to express themselves. And this meme culture is proving pivotal to TikTok’s success. For example, take the 2019 music sensation Lil Nas X, whose song Old Country Road became popular around the world due to people doing the ‘Yee Yee Juice’ challenge on TikTok.

However, in October 2019, two senior members of Congress, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Sen. Tom Cotton, asked U.S intelligence officials to determine whether TikTok posed national security risks. As mentioned earlier, TikTok is a Chinese-owned startup. In a letter to Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence, the lawmakers questioned TikTok’s data-collection practices and whether the app adhered to censorship rules directed by the Chinese government that could limit what users in the U.S see. Other senators also showed their concern for TikTok - in late October 2019, Sen. Josh Hawley, (R-Mo) stated “For Facebook, the fear is lost social media market share. For the rest of us, the fear is somewhat different," he continued. "A company compromised by the Chinese Communist Party knows where your children are, knows what they look like, what their voices sound like, what they're watching, and what they share."

In November 2019, TikTok was then invited to appear in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, and declined to appear. In a letter to the subcommittee obtained by NBC, TikTok U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas said the company, owned by Chinese-based ByteDance, does not store any U.S. user data in China and does not remove content from its platform at the Chinese government's behest.

As of November 2019, TikTok passed 1.5 billion downloads worldwide on the App Store and Google Play, according to Sensor Tower. At that time, the app had 614 million downloads in 2019. These statistics show that the app is growing among people all around the world. The most impressive feature of the app is that it allows people to be creative in whatever way they would like, whether dancing along to a popular challenge, like the one that popularized Old Country Road, or people just sharing random videos of their dog.

With the current state of TikTok, it seems that TikTok will continue to sustain its growth into new markets. For example, TikTok is also becoming more popular in India - according to TechCruch, the platform has approximately more than 200 million users each month in India. Additionally, in TikTok’s efforts to keep penetrating the Indian market, in October 2019, TikTok launched an educational program in the country partnering with edtech startups Vedantu, Toppr, Made Easy and Gradeup. This came after TikTok run into issues with the Indian authorities as the authorities stated that TikTok was hosting and promoting illicit content, to which the app was temporarily banned then the ban was lifted.

TikTok could potentially keep expanding its app because of its daily usage numbers, and as we have learned from social media sites like Facebook, apps must keep developing to come up with new features. Otherwise, users become disengaged or bored. Social media is like anything that people are addicted to, the more you take in, the more your appetite for it grows. It’s evident that TikTok will continue to encourage other positive methods that the app can be used in different parts of the world, however, it also seems that due to different cultural practices and regulations in different countries, as it grows, it will also encounter legal challenges with local authorities in various countries. We will have to wait and see how the company will continue to sustain its popularity and image.

Works Cited

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