TikTok has had quite the 2019.
Just in case you somehow haven’t heard of the app that’s been embraced as a sort of Vine 2.0 (unrelated to the actual Vine 2.0), TikTok first launched in 2017 and quickly grew popular in countries like Japan and Thailand. At first, it was marketed and used almost solely as a lip-syncing app, with many folks making 15-second videos where they mouthed and/or danced along to popular songs.
But users have since broadened its content horizons, and now viewers can find everything from comedy to cats to cooking. TikTok got its first foothold in the West in August of last year, when owner Bytedance merged its user base with that of Musical.ly, a rival lip-syncing app already popular with U.S. teens. Just two months later, TikTok’s U.S.-based monthly app downloads began beating out those of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
The app grew even more this year. In June, it hit 700 million monthly active users across the globe, putting it not far behind Instagram’s 1 billion users. It also reportedly hit 1.5 billion total downloads, per data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower, making it the third most downloaded app on earth after Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Messenger. And TikTok’s not just appealing to your everyday user — it’s also popular with brands like Chipotle and Uniqlo, YouTube creators like David Dobrik and James Charles, Hollywood celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Will Smith, and organizations like the NBA, the NFL, and the Washington Post.
Not everything in 2019 has been on the up and up for TikTok, though. Bytedance started 2019 off by facing a $5.7 million Federal Trade Commission fine stemming from Musical.ly’s illegal collection of personal data from users under the age of 13, and the Musical.ly/TikTok merger is also the subject of a second, currently-ongoing federal investigation into Bytedance. This one, brought sometime in the last couple of months by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, is looking into potential national security issues concerning how much censorship China-based Bytedance exercises over U.S. users’ content.
TikTok has repeatedly said Bytedance doesn’t interfere with its users and that TikTok data is kept entirely separate from its parent company, but moderation documents leaked in September appear to show TikTok mods being asked to remove videos about topics the Chinese government doesn’t approve of, perhaps explaining the app’s dearth of videos about the widespread Hong Kong protests. And, notably, TikTok last week faced widespread backlash for banning a U.S. teen whose videos protesting China’s so-called “reeducation camps” for Muslims went viral.
To mark the end of this long year, the app has released its first annual U.S.-based TikTok Top 100, recognizing the top 10 videos, creators, songs, and more across 10 categories.
You can check out all 10 lists right here:
TOP 10 VIRAL VIDEOS
TOP 10 MEMES
TOP 10 ARTISTS
TOP 10 CELEBRITIES
TOP 10 BREAKOUT CREATORS
TOP 10 DANCE TRENDS
TOP 10 CREATIVE EFFECTS
TOP 10 PET VIDEOS
TOP 10 BEAUTY & STYLE VIDEOS
TOP 10 SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS
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