TikTok

TikTok Watch: High-schoolers are trolling teachers by using their first names

This new series reveals the latest TikTok trends, so you don’t have to. Let’s face it, if you signed up, it’d simply make you feel very old. When I was in school,…

80% youngsters want TikTok prohibited in India: Survey

Eight out of ten young Indians who took part in an Inshorts poll said TikTok should be prohibited in the country. The result arrived in April 2019, shortly after the Madras High…

Borussia Dortmund becomes first Bundesliga club to launch on TikTok

Borussia Dortmund became the first Bundesliga club to establish an official presence on TikTok in April 2019. The move placed the German club on a platform then known mainly for music, lip-syncing…

Major record labels want more money for music played on ByteDance-owned app TikTok and its China-based equivalent Douyin

The world’s three largest record companies were seeking substantially more money from ByteDance in 2019 for music used on TikTok and its China-based counterpart, Douyin. Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and…

The Madras high court has passed an order to ban download of TikTok

The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court issued a significant interim order on April 3, 2019, directing India’s central government to prohibit downloads of TikTok. The order did not arise from…

TikTok for money

TikTok’s rapid expansion in 2018 and early 2019 created an audience large enough to attract advertisers, talent managers and ambitious creators. Yet making money on the app was not as simple as…

TikTok is launching a series of online safety videos in its app

TikTok introduced an in-app educational series in early 2019 that used the service’s own short-video language to explain safety and privacy controls. Called “You’re in Control,” the project replaced a conventional page…

TikTok Yee Haw meme Challenge

A few seconds of music, a cup labeled as a mysterious drink and a sudden costume change created one of TikTok’s defining memes of early 2019. In the Yee Haw Challenge, an…

The newest craze on TikTok is people revealing ‘cursed’ images they draw themselves

TikTok’s creative community found a new use for the internet’s “cursed image” vocabulary in spring 2019. Instead of circulating unexplained photographs discovered in old albums or forgotten corners of the web, creators…

TikTok got 90 million users in India for the past 3 months

TikTok recorded extraordinary growth in India during the first quarter of 2019. Sensor Tower estimated that the app was installed there by 88.6 million first-time users between January and March, a figure…