LET′S MAKE A Tik Tok?

Can you lend me your phone to make a TIK TOK?

Mom ... my teenage daughters tell me ... let's make a Tik Tok together. If you have teenagers nearby, I'm sure you've heard this phrase on more than one occasion.And I promise to explain how you can set a trend by making a Tik Tok if you follow me through the end of this article… so don’t abandon me.

What is it?

First things first, as a professor of mine used to say: to understand this phenomenon that came to our lives less than two years ago, or rather the phenomenon that came to the lives of our teenagers and has become a revolution in Social Networks.

The figures are overwhelming. This platform has more than 500 million active users and rising ... nobody has achieved those results in such short periods of time.

We must look back to understand this phenomenon that triumphs unprecedented in Social Networks and especially in the so-called "Generation Z" that has become an indisputable user (we will talk in another article about Generation Z ... which gives a lot to say too).

The Chinese company Bytedance, founded in 2012 by Yiming Zhang, owns the musical social network Tik Tok. The original name of the network is Douyin which translated means “shake the music”. So far nothing new ... remember the impact “videoclips” had when they reached the music market in past generations?

The thing is, however, that TikTok was already in our lives more than 4 years ago. Do you remember Musical.ly? Indeed, if you remember, it is the inheritance that this network has left.

The app is a modernized version of Musical.ly ... launched in 2018 and they say that it has earned 3 billion dollars in less than 2 years. So, what makes TikTok different from other Social Networks?

The secret is just that it is simple, fast, with easy-to-use editing options so that everyone can make a video without great knowledge of editing... if we add to this the development of the “smartphones” that now have better lenses than a reflex camera which allow users to make high quality videos in record time.

 TikTok has managed to beat Facebook, double the number of followers of Linkedin and triple Twitter users. There is no social network that has achieved so much in such a short time.

How does it work?

For this we have to understand what is “hidden” behind these music videos with impossible choreographies sometimes. The initial approach is basic: like any other network you promote a video, you get likes and you visualize if you are able to hook your audience. The music to choose is very important and an unprocessed video does not need overdone poses or a special location.

A TikTok is made because yes, because I feel like it, because it allows me to show my choreographic skills, with my friends, the neighbor or with the pet. Everything has a place. In Tik Tok you don’t need an incredible Hollywood production, just naturalness and spontaneity, something that makes teenagers fall in love… “being authentic” in two words.

Who uses it?So far the network seems totally harmless, but the controversy is served since more than 80% of users are children or teenagers, in other words minors. Here we enter the most rugged issue which is data protection.

The Chinese government insists on demonstrating that the application is safe, do not forget that to be able to make a Tik Tok you have to create a profile, and this is where we must look further and question if all that user data, mostly from the millions of minors that manage this platform, is really protected ... Many governments are echoing this situation and asking the company for responsibility. In February of this year, TikTok paid $ 5.7 million to settle the charges of the Federal Trade Commission in the United States for illegally collecting data on minors.

 And what about security?

Is Tik Tok a secure network? Is the data protected? Unfortunately, the answer is not clear and although the company strives to demonstrate that data centers are located outside of China and that none of its data is subject to Chinese law, the truth is that network cybersecurity and some other doubtful practices on the use of user data make us question the network.

There I leave an advance of an issue that will give much to talk about and has already become a state issue in many countries: the security of our data and the protection of minors in the use of Social Networks.