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TOKYO – A 2020 global download survey shows TikTok, a video sharing app developed in China, topped the list of social media providers for the first time since the study was conducted for the first time in 2018.
As privacy concerns grow, Telegram, a messaging app that can delete posts, has also ranked first in a year when social media use has been boosted by the COVID pandemic -19.
ByteDance launched the international version of TikTok in 2017 and has since overtaken Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger – all of which are owned by Facebook – in downloads, even in the United States.
“I enjoy the videos of artists who are no longer performing live because of the pandemic,” said Nina, 37, of Portland, US.
Some believe that personal information shared with TikTok is not secure. In 2020, former President Donald Trump called on the company to sell its business in the United States or be banned. The popularity of the app nonetheless increased during the pandemic, when it became the first download in Europe, South America and the United States.
Joe Biden, Trump’s successor, has withdrawn the presidential decree, but uncertainties remain elsewhere. While the Financial Times reported on Sunday that ByteDance had relaunched its intention to go public in the coming months, a spokesperson told Nikkei Asia on Monday that the article was “inaccurate,” insisting the company did not had no current plans to list on the stock market.
China’s Likee, a competitor to TikTok, creates short videos that many companies use for marketing, and it ranked eighth in the latest global download league.
In early 2021, WhatsApp announced that it would share messaging data related to interactions between users and businesses with Facebook. Although WhatsApp has promised to protect information on communications between friends and family, some users have switched to other applications.
Against this trend, Telegram, a messaging app originally developed in Russia but now based in Germany, dropped to seventh place. Users can adjust the settings to automatically delete messages after a specified period. The app was particularly successful with protesters in Hong Kong and Thailand who wanted to operate under the state’s radar.
Previously, users were primarily guided by the convenience and ease of use of free social media, but privacy has become a concern of late. “How companies approach data processing will become a decisive factor in consumer choices,” Shinichi Yamaguchi, associate professor at the Center for Global Communications, told Nikkei.
Discord, a voice calling app that rose to seventh place, took advantage of people’s need to self-isolate during the pandemic. The app is popular among gamers for online chatting and was funded by the Sony Group. Social media services have primed the pump for greater outside investment and greater business involvement.
Domestic applications dominate the Chinese market, where many foreign applications are closed. Three of the top ten in China relate to the publication of short videos, including Douyin, the predecessor of TikTok, which ByteDance still supplies in China.
Douyin is popular for music, dancing, and general entertainment content. Douyin Volcano Edition – also from ByteDance – offers videos of everyday life, including people falling on the streets and other incidents.
Tencent’s WeShow focuses on video games and includes celebrities playing live games.
Among newcomers, Little Red Book (RED, Xiaohongshu) was the fifth most downloaded. It combines social networks with e-commerce, mainly cosmetics, fashion, dietary supplements and consumer goods. Word of mouth is important in China, especially among women. “I read reviews of cosmetics and other products every day,” said a user in Beijing.
Online networking is particularly popular among Generation Z, or Zoomers, born in the second half of the 1990s. Soul, the number ten app, uses artificial intelligence to analyze users’ personalities through psychological testing. It then matches them with others with similar profiles. A major difference from traditional matchmaking services is that people are not screened on the basis of a photo of their face. Consumers use the app to match or simply find new friends.
Short videos have gained popularity in other parts of Asia. Snack Video, an app from Chinese company Kuaishou, was the sixth most downloaded in Asia-Pacific. Its main feature is live trading, a combination of video streaming and online shopping. Companies have used it to increase sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Line, which is particularly popular in Thailand, was ousted from the world rankings by stiff competition from new players. In Japan, however, it went from number two to number one. Line is striving to become a great app by improving its payment settlement function.
During the pandemic, Osaka prefectural authorities used Line for vaccine reservations, and it is widely used by other local governments in Japan to disseminate information, making it increasingly an integral part of the daily infrastructure. However, a subcontractor in China has been discovered to be able to view data from Japanese users, which makes security more of a concern.
The American pairing app Pairs was originally developed in Japan, where it reached eighth place. With the pandemic underway, it offers a remote dating feature which was added in April 2020 to allow people to maintain romantic ties from home. “I started using the service because I couldn’t have real meetings with people during the pandemic,” said an office worker in his 20s.
“TikTok’s total viewing time in the US and UK is longer than that of YouTube, and the short videos will continue to gain attention,” said Chuzen Kin, Marketing Director at App Annie, a application market intelligence firm, in Nikkei as he examined trends. . “In terms of content, music and comedy are becoming more and more popular.” Voice social media is also on the rise, with Clubhouse taking off in Japan and the United States in early 2021.
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