​TikTok, the most popular app among the under-25 audience, held its first press conference in Romania and reports that the number of users in the country has increased by 70% in the past two years. How long is an average TikTok clip, how many users ever post something? Are there moderators for Romanian content?

TikTok and some key figures

TikTok has surpassed 1.1 billion users worldwide, but does not provide country-by-country figures. At the end of the article, you can read the ratings for the countries where the application is the best.

Those at TikTok say there are also moderators for the Romanian language, which is necessary considering the fact that the number of users has almost doubled in the last two years and is close to millions.

The TikTok app has been available in Europe since 2019, after renaming Musical.ly to TikTok. The head office is in London and the regional office is in Warsaw (opening in January 2021). There are several sales and advertising specialists in Romania.

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TikTok allows videos up to 10 minutes long, but the average length of uploaded clips is 2.5 minutes. It must be said that only a tenth of those who have TikTok accounts ever post anything, so 90% of those who go online are passive users. Basically, it “consumes” content for an average of one and a half hours a day, going faster or slower through clips provided by a highly efficient algorithm.

These figures are global, those from TikTok do not want to provide data on the local market, despite the insistence of Romanian journalists. TikTok officials explained that audience demographics are only available to customers who sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Company representatives could not provide details on the share of the young audience in the total number of users, this young audience is an advantage TikTok has over Facebook, which has a less young audience.

Company representatives said in Bucharest that the application is ripe, adding that this is also evident from the fact that more and more people between the ages of 35 and 40 are creating accounts. The minimum age for TikTok registration is 13 years.

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Data from the US shows that half of users are under the age of 25, which Facebook can only dream of.

A big difference from other networks is that TikTok does not insist that those who have an account post anything at any time, but relies heavily on passive consumption and especially on the “For You” section, where you you can learn about trends, brands, users and products, depending on them they give you algorithms that build your profile from the first seconds after you start watching clips.

A study conducted in Romania found that 46% of local TikTok users log in to discover different new things.

TikTok representatives also confirmed a trend that has been written about a lot lately: more and more people are using the network as a visual search engine to quickly find different things.

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“People don’t just come to see, they come to search. We are becoming a search engine, so more and more people are searching TikTok. We say this very clearly: our business is NOT to compete with Google, we don’t want to, but we want to do things in our own style. But it seems that users are finding relevant content online.”

TikTok employees say that this network is an entertainment (entertainment, leisure) platform, where you do NOT come to check what your friends have posted or what’s new, but come to view new, original content vertically on a screen with sound. . TikTok says it’s more of a video app like Netflix and Hulu than a social network like Facebook or Instagram.

According to TikTok data, about 1% of posted videos are removed because they violate various rules set by the network. The company insists that more and more users learn about a large number of brands and products from the network, so it is worth investing in advertising. Obviously, ad sales also benefit from the fact that some users spend more than 2-3 hours a day “watching” all kinds of videos and end up recommending products and buying after seeing them there.

The company cited a study from Romania in which the majority of respondents said they were not bothered by in-app ads. It must be said that there are quite a few ads: sometimes one appears every 2-3 scrolls between different videos.

The company has people in Romania who deal with advertising, partnering with different agencies and campaigns. Given the company’s business, it’s no surprise that research presented by TikTok shows that users don’t mind a lot of ads.

We can estimate that TikTok has at most 3-4 million users in Romania who have created accounts, but it is impossible to say what proportion of these users log in very often. The number of accounts that frequently create content is probably in the tens of thousands or somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 at most. BUT it should be said that these are ONLY estimates because TikTok does NOT provide numbers for any specific country.

TikTok and its exceptional growth

It took Facebook nearly nine years to reach one billion users, Instagram eight years, and WhatsApp seven years. The TikTok network, known for short videos with teenagers, managed to reach a billion in the summer of 2021 in just five years (and two and a half years after rebranding), although it faced many obstacles. How did he do it? Many things have been hugely important, from algorithms to the development of the Internet.

TikTok had 300 million users in 2018, and surpassed one billion a year ago. There are no official figures, but it is estimated that there are 140 million TikTok users in the US, 106 million in Indonesia, and 84 million in Brazil. Rounding out the top five are Mexico and Russia, each of which has more than 50 million. (data source oberlo.com). These ten countries have a total of over 600 million users.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia round out the top 10. From Europe, the best would be the United Kingdom with 24 million.

Why was TikTok so successful?

• He bet on the fact that young people don’t have the mood or patience to watch long videos, so he became extremely popular with clips that last a few seconds but grab your attention.

• It is a 100% visual application where interesting and funny videos are successful.

• TikTok appeared at the right time and assumed that the youth wanted to see. Highly efficient algorithms keep feeding them different short videos one after the other. Algorithms quickly “learn” each user’s preferences and predict with great success what they want to see. The result is that young people will find it increasingly difficult to break away from these programs.

• The algorithm is extremely well thought out, so it “learns” what you like from the first seconds, and then, in the app, you don’t really have any external links to click, so you don’t really have a reason to leave the application.

• Videos are easy to create, you have a choice of filters and background music, without the need for technical knowledge. The number of video filters was always growing.

• Teens who never thought they’d go viral have done so with funny, interesting and/or helpful videos/

• Moderation is very low, so things may be posted that would be removed on other networks. TikTok = almost complete freedom for many of its fans.

• The app spawned a number of trends, and numerous challenges launched online, some of them dangerous, attracted new users and created many viral videos.