With a new LA office and a forthcoming creator studio, TikTok is poised to take on Instagram and YouTube (GOOG, FB)
TikTok has also been plagued by security concerns and over reports of censorship at the request of the Chinese government. Several senators have asked for investigations into TikTok as a national security risk, and the Army and Navy have both barred TikTok from government phones. These concerns don't seem to have hurt the company: it was the second-most-downloaded app in the Apple App Store and Google Play store in 2019, surpassed only by Facebook-owned WhatsApp. TikTok has 1.65 billion downloads to date, according to SensorTower. It might also be closing in on Instagram and Snapchat in numbers of active users, though TikTok hasn't disclosed those numbers. Instagram reached 1 billion monthly active users in 2018, while Snapchat has over 300 million.
TikTok has been closing in on these company in other ways, too. In 2019, the company opened an office in Mountain View, California, just minutes away from Instagram-owner Facebook's headquarters. The office that TikTok moved into was formerly occupied by WhatsApp, another Facebook company.
CNBC reported that TikTok poached more than two dozen Facebook employees, along with workers from Snapchat, Hulu, and Google, which owns YouTube. Facebook and TikTok both appear aware of their growing competition. A November report revealed that Facebook spent six months in 2016 trying to buy Musical.ly before it was sold to ByteDance.Â
In leaked audio published by The Verge in October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company's plans to compete with TikTok: "So yeah. I mean, TikTok is doing well ... we're trying to first see if we can get it to work in countries where TikTok is not already big before we go and compete with TikTok in countries where they are big."
TikTok isn't Instagram or YouTube, it's something different altogether. Influencers like Bernath emphasize how much faster they can grow their followings on TikTok, although it's still the "wild west" in terms of what those numbers mean to advertisers. Still, Instagram and YouTube might have to watch their backs with TikTok coming up behind them.
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