New York (AFP)
Containment measures have boosted the popularity of the TikTok social network, which has been joined by adults and a few advertisers, whereas it has until now been essentially a playground for children.
From Jennifer Lopez to Mariah Carey, via Jane Fonda, 82, celebrities flock to the Chinese platform ByteDance and publish short videos (maximum 60 seconds, but more often around 15 seconds).
Many adults are now looking into this phenomenon that children have been talking to them about for months.
After receiving a video sent by friends, Cécile, intrigued and confined, downloaded the application, then launched herself, with her two children, 6 and 3 years old.
"I said to myself: well, this is a funny thing that I could do with the boys to make them pass the time, if only for a quarter of an hour," says this part of the Paris region.
"When I say: come on, we're making a video, they're on the block. It makes them laugh."
Confinement requires, the use of social networks is increasing overall, but TikTok, already in full growth before the pandemic, is doing better than others.
With 65 million downloads worldwide in March, according to the specialized site SensorTower, the TikTok application, which had 800 million users in January (according to DataReportal), is close to the billion members, even if the site itself does not report numbers.
TikTok has the particular advantage of not requiring a neat setting, an idyllic vacation spot, as they love Instagram, today inaccessible to the greatest number, explains Thibault Le Ouay, founder of the company Pentos, which supports brands in their marketing strategy on the platform.
"Charli D'Amelio", only 15 years old and absolute superstar of the network with 46 million subscribers, "she is at home, in leggings. This is not a video on a paradise beach", he underlines. "It's still something you can do at home."
Another strong point, TikTok, descendant of the Musical.ly platform, has in its DNA music and dance, the standard format of the videos being a choreography danced by miming the lyrics of the song used.
"The videos are generally rather light and humorous, and with all the negative information that we hear elsewhere, people need this right now," decrypts Debra Aho Williamson, analyst at eMarketer.
- Citizenship and messages -
To stay in step with the context, TikTok is trying to get the civic message of confinement across, especially with the keyword #happyathome (#heureuxchezsoi), which has recorded more than 7.9 billion views, according to a spokesperson for the platform.
"We are determined to do our part to help people get through this difficult time," she said.
TikTok has also created an information page on Covid-19, fed by elements of the World Health Organization (WHO) and which endeavors, among other things, to "dispel certain myths" around the virus, she says.
Good citizenship, good gestures, this is the entry point that brands currently use to communicate on TikTok, a space where advertising was still scarce until recently.
The American hygiene and cleaning products giant Procter & Gamble has thus teamed up with star Charli D'Amelio for a campaign on social distancing.
The field of expression of brands is limited by the coronavirus and the possibilities of monetizing the current popularity of TikTok are therefore limited, underline the specialists.
In addition, "brands are interested in TikTok but (...) the time is rather to cut in marketing budgets", says Debra Aho Williamson, "and what is experimental is often what is deleted first".
The analyst also explains that the fact that the platform is controlled by a Chinese group is sometimes "a concern for people in the United States, and especially brands", who may be concerned about the use of the data.
eMarketer, which predicted that TikTok would grow from 37 to 45 million users in the United States this year, has not revised its projections in favor of the coronavirus crisis.
The acceleration the application is currently experiencing "will it continue when adults return to work and have other things to do?" point Debra Aho Williamson. "It's too early to tell".
© 2020 AFP