How TikTok Won The Mobile Video Wars By Breaking All The Rules

In just two years, TikTok went from being a niche app where teenagers post videos of themselves lip-synching and dancing to one of the most dominant cultural forces in the country. In the first nine months of this year, the mobile app was downloaded by more than 64 million first-time U.S. users, according to Sensor Tower, double the number from the same period last year. You don’t get to that level of saturation without breaking a few rules, and TikTok succeeded in part because it took an existing space—mobile video—and brought something entirely new to it, says Katie Puris, TikTok’s managing director and global head of business marketing. “Simply put, it’s full-screen, sound-on video,” Puris said at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Friday. “That hasn’t existed before for mobile, where people experience an app in sound-on and where the experience that people get—from a user piece of content to a brand piece of content—looks and feels exactly the same.” Read more at Fast Company.