On Monday, TikTok revealed that it has crossed a major milestone, by reaching more than 1 billion monthly active users. TikTok, which is privately held by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, is the successor to Musical.ly and was originally a platform for lip-syncing videos. During a rapid growth in the last few years, the app has expanded to other categories and is now considered one of the most used interactive platforms, especially among teens and young adults.

“Each month, over a billion people from around the world come to TikTok to be entertained, inspired or discover something new, like sports, music, arts and culture, fashion, DIY and more.”

TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas

In my opinion, this is a relevant article because TikTok is one of the most successful apps, and therefore has an impact on further developments in social media brands, as well as user behavior. Moreover, I find the statements Sofia Hernandez made an interview last week very interesting. Talking to Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit, the head of North American business marketing at TikTok explained: “TikTok runs on a content graph so we consider us as more of an entertainment platform. What we’re finding is our users are spending a movie’s worth of time-consuming content on TikTok daily. So, while people will go check social platforms they came to watch TikTok.” I was wondering why Hernandez wants TikTok to be considered as an entertainment platform, rather than a social platform. Maybe, this definition is more profitable or honorable for TikTok.