Rise of TikTok Explained in Terms of Network Effects
We have been discussing network effects in markets and self fulfilling expectations equilibria and how this information can be used to market a product to become successful. TikTok, the new trending social platform for lip-syncing music videos, reached six million downloads on Apple’s App Store last month. (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tiktok-app/) .The platform has been increasingly gaining popularity over the last couple of months. We can explain its rise in terms of two tipping points. The first was when they were able to overcome the competition from other lip-syncing music video apps in China. Then the second tipping point was its merger with Musical.ly enabling it to expand into the global market and continue to grow. It is important to note that besides the direct benefit that comes from its large user base, the app does offer some features that make it distinct from other social platforms, so there are some information based reasons to its success as well. Leo Sun concludes his article mentioning that TikTok’s growth might peak, or might burn out like Vine. I think, that at 500,ooo users it’s already past its tipping point so we’ll continue to see more growth before it peaks out. It is unlikely that it can easily give in to competition at this point even as Facebook launches Lasso, a similar lip-syncing music video app.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/11/14/facebook-chases-bytedance-with-a-tiktok-clone.aspx