While the merger brought some new features, the process was virtually undetectable to users, who kept their accounts and all preexisting content and followers. In 2018, ByteDance decided to merge Douyin and Musical.ly under the name TikTok. At the time, Douyin was not well known outside of China. But it did own a short-video sharing platform branded as Douyin. When it acquired Musical.ly, ByteDance was mostly focused on news and was largely absent from social media landscape. We have seen similar scenarios before, when a successful start-up is acquired by a bigger player on the market. This led to its acquisition by the Chinese media giant ByteDance for US$1 billion. During 20, Musical.ly, a social media start-up from China, was trending among most downloaded apps on both Apple and Google's app stores. The user base is the most valuable asset of any social media platform. Musical.ly successfully engineered playfulness and performativity as its key features. The app store description reads: "the world's largest creative platform."Ĭhildrens' engagement with digital devices is often driven by their desire for creative expression, entertainment and social interaction. This tactic enabled Musical.ly to alleviate parental concerns associated with childrens' use of social media. In order to reach preteen audiences, social media apps need to get past the gatekeepers of preteen online engagement: the parents.įrom the beginning, Musical.ly presented itself as a tool for creativity and play rather than a social media platform. They not only identified potential future users of the app, but also non-users that might hamper their success. The creators of Musical.ly did their homework. Snapchat's SnapKidz, YouTube Kids and most recently Facebook's Messenger Kids all focused on creating a "child-friendly" version of the main app. Many big players have made recent attempts to capture this particular audience. The rapid increase of smartphone ownership among preteens presented a relatively uncaptured potential user base for social media. We soon realised that the preteen demographic was central to Musical.ly's success – and to its evolution. Although most young participants in the study were considered by their parents to be "too young" for social media, some had accounts on a new platform called Musical.ly – now known as TikTok.
In 2016, we conducted an ethnographic study on social media use among families with preteen children in Melbourne.
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