TikTok, founded in 2016 by Zhang Yiming, bridged the gap between social media, music, and dance and combined the three in the best ways possible. Social media platforms like Instagram are aimed at an older target audience. TikTok has a very youthful feel to it and many of its users are teenagers. There was an opening in the market to target the youth with a fun, interactive, app and Zhang saw that.
The app received funding in part due to his experience as a lifelong entrepreneur and his previous ventures. One of his more notable ones was ByteDance – a company based in China. TikTok was an extension of ByteDance once Yiming concluded that they needed to expand to a global level. Technically, it was a pivot on the concept of ByteDance.
The primary business model for TikTok is structured to to earn revenue in two primary ways. The first is through ads and the second is to take a portion of the monetization that their app influencers generate. These are the two primary ways that TikTok generate revenues.