TikTok Reaches 1 Billion Monthly Active Users

TikTok announced in a blog post today that 1 billion people use TikTok every month. From a report: That means that on this big rock in space that we call home, about one in seven-and-a-half people are regularly watching short-form videos of dancing, dangerous "milk crate challenges" and even actual educational content. For context, Facebook said that in June it had 2.9 billion monthly active users, up 7% year over year. But TikTok's growth is rapid -- this new user data marks a 45% increase in monthly active users since July 2020, when it had 689 million users. Plus, this July, TikTok became the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion global downloads, per app analytics firm SensorTower. The competition that TikTok poses to Western tech giants is palpable -- Instagram, owned by Facebook, has radically shifted its focus, declaring that it's no longer a photo-sharing app. Instagram is heavily promoting Reels, its TikTok clone, and even discussion forums like Reddit are enticed by the promise of short-form video feeds. Instagram even advised creators that if they recycle watermarked TikToks as posts on Reels, the content will be less discoverable.

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