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Inside TikTok’s Explosive Growth
It’s difficult to overstate how dominant TikTok’s become. Even the analysts are puzzled.
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When Oscar Orozco, the director of forecasting at eMarketer, set forth to model TikTok’s growth for 2021, he thought it had to slow down. People used TikTok for 38.6 minutes each day in 2020, approximating Facebook’s all-time high of 39.8 minutes. That was a year of lockdowns. And with restrictions lifted and a higher base to work off, TikTok was supposed to stall. But instead, it defied his expectations.
“We were surprised to see the growth we did,” Orozco said. “We thought it would stabilize.”
TikTok shot past Facebook’s time spent record in 2021, reaching 44 daily minutes per user that year. It surpassed Instagram as well. It passed YouTube worldwide, according to some reports. And it’s posed to best the app in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer. TikTok’s grown so fast it’s broken the models. And with precedent out the window, its sizzle has shown little sign of cooling. “There might not be any end in sight,” Orozco said.
