TikTok now has one billion monthly active users worldwide. This figure shows the rapid growth of TikTok in the past year, which was also driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This achievement was announced by TikTok in its blog post. With this achievement, it means that one in seven people around the world diligently watch videos on TikTok every month.
"Over a billion people around the world come to TikTok every month to be entertained while they learn, laugh or discover something new," TikTok said in a blog post.
TikTok says they had 55 million global users in January 2018. In December 2018, that number rose to 271 million, then increased again to 507 million in December 2019.
As of July 2020, TikTok reported its monthly active user count reached 689 million. This means that the number of monthly active users of TikTok has increased by 45% in the past year.
In comparison, Facebook, which is the world's largest social media, announced its monthly active user count reached 2.9 billion last June. This figure represents an increase of 7% from year to year.
The influence of TikTok in the social media landscape is also increasingly felt because its competitors are also developing their own version of short video features. Like Instagram which launched Reels since last year, followed by YouTube which launched a similar feature called Shorts.
TikTok says its biggest markets are the United States, Europe, Brazil and Southeast Asia. The app itself is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company, and has a separate app called Douyin for users in their home country.
Despite its rapid growth, TikTok has also faced a challenging year. Last year, former US President Donald Trump tried to block TikTok's US business for reasons of national security threat.
TikTok was about to be sold to Oracle so that it can continue to operate normally. But after Joe Biden was elected President of the US, the planned sale of TikTok to US companies was canceled indefinitely.