The rise of TikTok: why Facebook is worried about the booming social app

theguardian.com:

TikTok is on track to overtake the global advertising scale of Twitter and Snapchat combined this year, and to match mighty YouTube within two years, as trendsetting teens and young adults make it the hottest social app of the moment – and Facebook is worried.

The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival.

Helped by unparalleled moments of cool at the height of the pandemic – Idaho labourer Nathan Apodaca skateboarding along to Dreams put Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours back in the top 10 more than four decades after its release – TikTok’s surging growth belies the metronomic pace of its name.

Last year, it overtook the global ad take of Snapchat, previously the digital hangout of choice for teens and twentysomethings, and by the end of this year it will have surpassed that of Twitter. This year it is predicted to triple worldwide ad revenues, to $11.6bn, more than the $10.44bn for Snapchat and Twitter combined.

“TikTok’s user base has exploded in the past couple of years, and the amount of time users spend on the app is extraordinary,” says Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, which compiled the ad spend forecast. “It has moved well beyond its roots as a lip-syncing and dancing app. It creates trends and fosters deep connections with creators that keep users engaged, video after video.”

TikTok landed its billionth user in 2021, four years after global launch, half the time it took Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, and three years faster than WhatsApp. Earlier this week, analysts at data.ai revised a prediction that TikTok