- Who
- TikTok
- What
- 5 years year(s)
- Where
- Not Applicable ()
- When
On 27 September 2021, TikTok announced that it had surpassed the milestone of 1 billion monthly active users (MAU), just five years after it launched. The short-form video-sharing network was first released on 26 September 2016 (initially as A.me, then shortly after renamed Douyin) by the web technology company ByteDance (China). The platform was rebranded internationally as TikTok in September 2017.
TikTok's journey to 1 billion MAU outpaced all of the more established social media networks such as Facebook (8.7 years), Instagram (7.7 years) and YouTube (8.1 years). Despite being one of the first such websites, started in 2006, Twitter has yet to reach the threshold; its last reported MAU in 2019 was 330 million.
This record focuses on one-to-many social-media networks, as opposed to one-to-one/few-focused messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Tencent QQ and Facebook Messenger which perform more of a text message/email function than a multimedia-sharing hub/community. Facebook Messenger reached 1 billion MAU slightly faster than TikTok (4.9 years), though its massive uptake was primarily driven by the fact that Facebook removed the ability to send private messages unless users downloaded the standalone app in 2014.
