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Musical.ly officially rebranded itself into TikTok on August, 2018. This app has gone viral worldwide in the short amount of time since its rebranding. The app, originally named Douyin, launched in China under the company ByteDance. As it started to expand into many countries, it was branded as TikTok for the international market.As it started to expand internationally, ByteDance moderated the name into TikTok to sound more familiar to its international users. It is a combination of the apps Vine and Musical.ly — Vine being an app where people post short funny videos, and Musical.ly being a place for people to post lip-sync videos
So is the newly branded TikTok better than Musical.ly? Many people all over the world are becoming more and more aware of the app. Musical.ly allegedly has had up to 100 million active users monthly, whereas TikTok has reached up to 500 million active users monthly. The popularity of the app is growing because there are much better-known celebrities participating in TikTok than Musical.ly. These celebrities include Khloe Kardashian, Lil Yachty, and K-pop band Blackpink.
Although TikTok has gained a great deal of popularity, there has been controversy regarding the platform. TikTok requires users to be at least 13 years old, and users under 18 years of age need approval from a parent or guardian. However, some are still worried that their children might be exposed to explicit content, such as young girls dancing to sexy music while wearing revealing outfits. Another major concern is that there have been cases where young users were asked by strangers to post nude or explicit photos or videos of themselves.
TikTok has developed safety measures to address parents’ concerns, as the company claims that its top priority is to promote a safe and positive online environment. In this app, users are unable to send videos or images to other users privately. Additionally, users can choose to make their accounts private, block other users, decline messages as a whole, and to report any account or content.
Sophomore Angelina C, former user of Musical.ly and now a user of TikTok commented, “There are many similarities between the two apps, but I think that TikTok is more entertaining as Musical.ly had mostly lip-sync videos, whereas there is a variety of different content on TikTok.” Junior Candy L. agreed: “I downloaded the app because I was curious of why it was so popular. Now, this app is enjoyable as there are many memes and funny clips.”
What do you think about this app? Be sure to comment down below!
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