Back in 2012 when Instagram was blowing up with popularity, it was possible to become very popular through consistent posting, no matter who you were. Now it isn’t so easy to get “Instafamous” through solely posting good stuff due to heavy marketers and so called “big boys” pushing away all the informal, regular profiles by paying fortunes to advertise on Instagram. TikTok is taking a completely different approach to social media by welcoming the relaxed-styled users and raw content.

With TikTok blowing up as of 2019, it welcomes youngsters to get “TiktTok famous” from their bedroom!

Accessibility Comparison

 Nearly ten years ago, Instagram mastered accessibility to all ages, allowing anyone to build their status on a platform that is easy to use. As the platform gained more and more success, it arguably became harder to gain popularity through instagram as more and more people were finding new mastering techniques. After time, this broke a bit of its accessibility feature as now, the successful, famous profile image is only one achievable through constant money pumps or full teams of editors and marketers grinding out your Instagram profile.

TikTok is starting out just the same as Instagram, just on a much larger scale. TikTok lets kids be on the same level as big brands without any effort. Due to TikTok barely requiring anything to get famous, free users have the same chance at getting “TikTok famous” than anybody else in the biz, even the big companies.

Although TikTok has broken through the roof with downloads, it is still not as prestigious as Instagram or Facebook, thus it is more meaningful to have a popular Instagram profile than to have a popular TikTok profile as of today. That’s why people are getting the habit of gaining lots of traction with TikTok and then using it to promote their Instagram or Facebook page.

Instagram Realises Their New Adversary

TikTok has become a growing threat to Instagram and Facebook, especially given its popularity with the younger Generation Z (8 – 23-year-olds), a demographic Instagram and Facebook are eager to recapture with their conscious attempts to mimic TikTok with their standalone video-sharing apps called Lasso and Reel.

Leaked audio from an internal meeting uncovered Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to market Lasso in places like Mexico where TikTok isn’t as prominent, the same is with Instagram’s Reel which is being marketed in Brazil. Before this though, Mark Zuckerberg tried to acquire Musical.ly in 2016 which would later become TikTok.

How TikTok Can Fail

Every great, popping platform had it’s good year like Vine and HQ Trivia for example, it’s when it comes to making it stick which desipheres the successes from the hits. For TikTok to really succeed, it cannot just be a trend, in the way that people would try TikTok, use it a few times and be done with it, which has been occuring quite a lot with TikTok at the moment.

TikTok’s spending  of $3 million a day on ads in the U.S. can turn it into a permanent household name but only if it can sustain users’ interest.

For TikTok to keep a constant flow of users, it needs to keep shipping hits. No matter how great or revolutionary the app is, even if it is keeping a constant amount of users, if it doesn’t evolve in even the slightest ways, it’s just going to flop. This is because people can only be interested in something for so long even if it’s golden.

it remains to be seen to what extent TikTok’s buzzing video feed is staying material. New features are what keep people attracted. Both Vine and HQ got stuck in the mud by not following up their hit with another one. If TikTok takes a bit from Snapchat’s book it can survive. Snap followed up their original hit (dissappearing messages) with something even cooler (short-lived stories) which as a side fact, was so attractive that even Instagram had to steal it. Instagram kept its cool for so long because they kept introducing new features. First it was the direct messages, then it was the stories, IGTV and so on. For TikTok to survive, it needs to get into the habit of forming combinations.

“TikTok is the Instagram for the mobile video age” according to Tech Crunch, and can very well be the next Instagram entirely if it is played correctly. As the only app in the top 5 that isn’t owned by Facebook, it may be a stepping stone to showing other aspects of how social media can be approached.