TikTok Boom

'It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller - this one does.' - Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View

'Vital to understanding how [TikTok] works and the impact it's having.' - Damian Collins MP, former chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee

'TikTok Boom is a must-read for students, scholars, and policymakers.' - David Craig, Clinical Professor, USC Annenberg

In just a few years, TikTok has stormed ahead of its rivals to become the world's biggest app. Where did it come from and how did it overtake its rivals?

Journalist Chris Stokel-Walker delves deep into the origins of China's viral video app. He yields new insights into its culture, addictive algorithm, and influencer ecosystem. And he reveals the influence its owners at its parent company ByteDance in Beijing are having on hundreds of millions worldwide through the policing of little-known content guidelines, including those on physical appearances.

TikTok is the emerging battleground for a geopolitical tussle between East and West for control of social media. It has already been banned in India and a ban in the USA has been suggested by Republican politicians.

TikTok Boom is a rollercoaster business story bristling with ambition and drama.

Find out where TikTok came from, where it's going what it can do for you.

Reviews

'A careful, detailed teardown of the people, culture and technology behind the world's most dynamic social network. It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller - this one does.' - Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View

'It's clear that Stokel-Walker's strength is that he's not just TikTok-literate, he's TikTok-fluent. He knows the product, the people, and the entire ecosystem inside and out, and it is this familiarity that makes his telling so compelling because he knows how to make you feel like you, too, are an insider in this strange new world.' - Rui Ma, founder, Tech Buzz China

'Blending journalistic narrative with state-of-the-art academic research, no other author comes close to weaving this epic tale of the rise of China's first global platform threatening Silicon's Valley hegemony while operating as inflection point around the rise of one globe two Internet systems. This is a must-read for students, scholars, and policymakers.' - David Craig, Clinical Professor, USC Annenberg

Start

Andy Warhol's idea that anyone can be famous for 15 minutes has never looked shakier. In the programme for an exhibition in Stockholm in 1968, the American pop art pioneer wrote: 'In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.' What struck many at the time as an outlandish prediction is in danger of being undercut by reality in the third decade of the 21st Century. On TikTok, anyone with a mobile phone can become known to hundreds of millions of people for a matter of seconds and then slip back into anonymity. True, a run of successful self-shot videos can propel an individual from an everyday life into that of a multi-millionaire. Unlike in Warhol's age, however, the metamorphosis from ordinariness to fame occurs not through the multiple media channels of Andy Warhol's age, but through a single, super-fast, ever-mutating social media app. Which is ultimately owned in China and ruled over by an inscrutable algorithm.

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