What's the next Instagram? Or Twitter? Or even Facebook? 🤔
These major networks (which also includes LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest) have long defined the social media category, making it hard for any newcomer to snag market share. Like really, really hard. Space in our smartphones is precious real estate, which means we're less inclined to download new apps. Especially when all our friends are already spread across six huge social networks.
Case and point: RIP Vine. And Secret. And Yik Yak. And Peach. 💀
The next big thing
TikTok has recently emerged as a new — and successful — social app, at least from a usage point of view. In 2017, ByteDance (TikTok's China-based owner) acquired teen social app Musical.ly for ~$1B as a way to enter the U.S. market. Unfortunately Mindie, a very similar app that predated Musical.ly from a French-based team, didn’t find the same level of traction.
In November, the app reportedly surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in monthly downloads in the U.S. Yesterday, ByteDance announced that TikTok has reached 250 million daily active users, and then launched Duoshan, an app that is veryyy similar to Snapchat . 😱
If you're not familiar with TikTok, it's sort of like a social network for amateur music videos. Dancing, gymnastics, comedy, cheerleading and parkour are also popular on the app. TikTok is built to constantly grab your attention, and as a result its user base skews pretty young.
If YouTube, Snapchat and BuzzFeed had a baby, this would be it.
TikTok's long-term survival
TikTok is undoubtedly blowing up, which means the big six will try to own it or clone it. In fact, Facebook already (quietly) launched its own TikTok competitor called Lasso.
While cynics might claim consumer social is dead, TikTok illustrates that mainstream consumers remain eager to play with new toys. Here are 5 other social consumer apps that we’re watching:
October is a semi-anonymous Twitter 🐦
Blind lets you chat anonymously at work 💬
Islands is like Slack but for college students 🎓
Dialog lets you create your own radio show in the internet 🎙
Horsealot is a social network for horse riders 🐴
In this week's episode of Product Hunt Radio, The Atlantic's Taylor Lorenz join us to chat about:
🤔 Why tech is neither good nor evil
💻 Nostalgia for the internet
😱 Netflix for horror movies
Listen now and big thanks to our sponsor AngelList for their support. 😸
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