TikTok is a video-sharing social networking platform and Chinese multinational company. The parent company of TikTok is ByteDance, and it introduced a Chinese version of the platform under the name of Douyin back in September 2016. The company launched the international version of Douyin in August 2018. Both of these platforms are the same, however, the Chinese version has some censored features. The merger with Musical.ly made the international version of Douyin, and TikTok possible.
TikTok’s main services and features are to make 15 seconds to 1-minute-long dance, funny, comedy, educational, and musical videos. The platform offers to make 3-minute longer videos to its high-ranking users.
TikTok has established reputation and popularity among people in a very short time. East Asia, South Asia, Australia, UK, the USA, Turkey, South Asia, and Russia are some of the popular markets of TikTok. According to a statistical figure, approximately more than 2.6 billion times people have downloaded TikTok on their smartphones by end of 2020. The platform offers its services in 74 different languages.
TikTok’s top competitors are Apple TV, Instagram, Amazon video prime, Netflix, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and others.
Today, we’ll study TikTok swot analysis. We’re going to focus on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats of the world’s top social media video sharing platform. Here’s the TikTok Swot analysis as follows.
Table of Contents
Strengths of TikTok
Market Share
According to an estimate, roundabout 1.1 billion people are the monthly active users of TikTok as of 2021. A vast majority of its users, approximately 60% of them fall in the category of Gen Z. The video-sharing social media platform is operating its business in over 154 countries across the globe.
Teamwork Culture
The most important impact of TikTok is that it has promoted the culture of group activities and teamwork culture like comedy, dancing, gathering videos, etc. The activity of recording video makes friends, family, and acquaintances get together and have fun. Before TikTok videos, the tech environment had created an environment of solitude and monotony.
Safety & Privacy
TikTok doesn’t allow people to send direct private messages to the content creator who isn’t following. It shows that the platform cares about the privacy of its users. However, the platform also provides the content creator an option to change the setting at any time and whether it’s to allow followers to send messages or not.
Free
Before TikTok, video editing used to be the work of professional editors and the cost of pro-editing software is still very high. However, TikTok offers all the features of any professional software for free. It’s very simple and convenient to use, just download the app and start editing the short videos.
Loyal Users
TikTok has established a large database of loyal users and content creators. Some of them are influencers and they’re doing word-of-mouth marketing on behalf of the company and attracting more users to join the platform. A crowded platform makes the new users safe to join the network. According to Hootsuite Digital Report, Andriod mobile users spend almost 19.6 hours per month.
Easy to Use
TikTok is a simple, convenient, and user-friendly social media video-sharing platform. Any non-tech would be able to use and operate the platform. Just keep on scrolling up, and it would keep showing the top-ranking videos. The type of videos you watch would keep showing you more relevant videos.
Weaknesses of TikTok
Time Consuming
According to a study, approximately 83% of TikTok users start making videos and posting them on the platform. In other words, the platform encourages young people to get involved in video-making activities. They use their young age energy and enthusiasm in such activity that has a very limited scope of success for some people. A very few of them would make their living out of it.
Addictive
According to a study conducted by Wallaroomedia, an ordinary TikTok user spends daily 52 minutes of their time on the platform. Young people ranging from 4 to 15 years old waste daily 80 minutes of their time on TikTok. However, they log in to the platform approximately 8 times daily. These figures show that the platform is attention-grabbing like an addiction.
Inappropriate Video Content
Some TikTok videos consist of highly inappropriate audio background music that isn’t good for young minds. The video-sharing platform doesn’t censor them. That’s why social media critics hail on the platform, and they further claim that the video-sharing platform is jeopardizing socio-cultural values. It’s promoting the trend of nudity, drugs, crude humor, and cruel values that are unacceptable for any civilized society.
Complicated Editing features
It’s no doubt TikTok is a user-friendly platform for ordinary users. When it comes to the editing of videos, then its features are highly tech-oriented. Any new video content creator has to spend a lot of time watching tutorial videos in order to learn the art of video editing. For instance, it would be very difficult for beginners to differentiate among various features and the right time to use them.
Opportunities for TikTok
Tech Mindset
TikTok and its video editing features have created the tech mindset of its users. Now, young people have the capability to use professional editing tools. It’s a good thing that the new generation knows the usage of technology through video sharing. However, some users are earning from the platform and making their living out of it.
Connections
TikTok is also a platform for content creators. If you remain consistent in posting your videos, then you’ll be visible to other content creators. If your videos are good, then they would contact you to launch a mutually beneficial project. That’s how you build your professional connections and increase your chance of making the platform your source of livelihood.
Promotion & Marketing
TikTok is an excellent video-sharing platform for marketing, branding, and promotion of the products/services of companies. Some of the top-ranking users on TikTok become influencers, and companies hire them to promote their products or services. It works fine for all the parties like the platform gets viewership, companies get marketing and promotion of their brand, and influencers earn money.
Threats to TikTok
Privacy Issues
When a person logs in to the platform, then TikTok asks the private information to create an account. In other words, the platform has the access to the information of its users and they use it for multiple purposes in order to manipulate the minds of people. However, the Chinese government has a bad reputation for human rights violations, controlled media, and censorship.
Chinese Brand
The censorships, controlled media, limited freedom of speech, and human rights concerns are some of the main issues that brought a negative reputation to the company. The Chinese government has a history of violating many international human rights standards. That’s why many countries and Western people don’t feel comfortable trusting the Chinese platform.
Regulations
Many countries have banned TikTok in their countries. For instance, the Indian government restricted TikTok and other 223 Chinese apps in June 2020. The conflict is aggravated by the shared border issue between India and China. However, other countries of the world share the same concern and some are even planning to ban it in their countries.
Conclusion
After a careful study of TikTok SWOT analysis, we’ve realized that TikTok is one of the world’s leading video-sharing platforms. Government restrictions, Chinese brand perception, and inappropriate content are some of the main issues. TikTok should present a better image of the company in order t address these issues.
