TikTok is one of the most well-known social media apps in the world, but very little is known about the company that owns it. A hugely popular app, TikTok has hundreds of millions of users around the world and was reportedly the most downloaded app worldwide in 2021 ahead of Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Snapchat.
Despite the numerous controversies it has attracted over the years, TikTok remains one of the most popular apps in the world, especially among teens and young people. It is also the home for many popular trends and challenges that attract many users. While some of those challenges might be dubious, others, like the raw egg-peeling challenge, are more wholesome.
While most people know about the founders of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, very little is known about who founded TikTok. What is known, however, is that it is owned and operated by a Chinese company named ByteDance, which also owns the news aggregation service Toutiao. ByteDance was founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, who has since gone on to become one of the richest people in the world. While TikTok was launched globally in 2017, it only came into prominence the following year after ByteDance bought another similar app called Musical.ly and then proceeded to merge it with TikTok. The combined service has since been growing from strength to strength despite facing severe challenges in many regions around the world.
TikTok Cannot Be Accessed From Inside China
While TikTok is a global phenomenon, people inside China are not even allowed to use the app. Instead, they use a Chinese version of the service, called ‘Douyin,’ which is basically the same app as TikTok and is also owned and operated by ByteDance. However, neither app has access to the other’s content. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the success of TikTok made ByteDance the world’s most valuable startup with a revenue of $20 billion in 2020 and catapulted Yiming as one of the richest men in China with a fortune estimated to be over $44.5 billion in 2021.
Despite all its success, TikTok’s journey has not been a bed of roses. It was banned in India in 2020 as part of the Indian government’s crackdown on a large number of Chinese apps and services. According to the government, the apps were banned because they posed a threat to the “sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order.” A few weeks later, the Trump administration also toyed with the idea of banning the app in the U.S., saying that the government has “credible evidence” that it poses a threat to the security of the United States. However, TikTok not only remains legal in the U.S. as of February 2022, but it remains ridiculously popular.
