Digital media The Information published on November 16 that TikTok plans to double the staffing of offices located in the San Francisco Bay Area until it reaches around 2,000 employees. That same day, Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, was asked about the mass layoffs on Twitter at a forum hosted by Bloomberg in Singapore. Chew said he hopes the company never gets to that point, saying the organization is such that they don’t need to lay off half their workforce to achieve desired productivity levels.

In other words, while Big Tech is shrinking significantly to adapt to recent changes in the economic landscape, TikTok is doing the opposite.The path that started in the pandemic continues: According to a LinkedIn analysis quoted by Business Insider, the number of employees specializing in business development increased by 483% in 2020 compared to the previous year, and that of the marketing department by 143%. .

In addition, the number of employees in the United States increased from 1,824 in December 2019 to 4,413 in June 2020. The Chinese social network therefore indicates that it has become a formidable competitor for Silicon Valley firms.

climbing positions. Based on the number of monthly active users, the Statista portal published a ranking of the most popular social networks worldwide in July. Facebook at the top of the list, followed by YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat and TikTok. This latest app has had great success in recent years, despite being ranked sixth, with an 800% increase in US users between 2018 and 2020, making tiktok.com the most popular web domain in 2021. disables Google, according to Cloudfare.

Kids don’t search on Google. Also, TikTok, along with Instagram, is the most popular search engine among young people. Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Google, said at a conference last July that the company’s research showed that 40% of teens do not use Google Maps but use TikTok or Instagram when looking for a place to eat.

Most used by teenagers. And the secret of TikTok is its popularity among the youngest: The Observer calculates that 80% of its users belong to Generation Z and Millennials. But the Chinese social network is particularly successful among ‘Gen Z’: American teens ages 12 to 17 used more TikTok per week in 2021 than Instagram, according to a Forrester study.

Facebook crash. In fact, according to Pew Research, TikTok usage among American youth has increased remarkably since 2014, making it the second most used app after YouTube, while Facebook usage has collapsed.

Goal Alert. Therefore, the concern of Facebook and Instagram owner Meta about the popularity of the Chinese social network is understandable. Last February, Mark Zuckerberg reported user loss in the last quarter of 2021, a first in the company’s history, and pointed to the rise of TikTok as the main reason for what happened. But Zuckerberg has seen the ears of the wolf before: In August 2020, Instagram introduced reels, a new short video display tool modeled after the one used by TikTok.

suspect patch. However, reels only account for 20% of time spent on Instagram, which is a problem because the remaining 80% time doesn’t provide the same benefit, as journalist Javier Ruiz recently reported on Cadena Ser.

good horizons. According to Statista, Bytedance, the company that owns TikTok, made a profit of $58 billion in 2021, an increase of almost 69% compared to the previous year. Also in June, Bloomberg reported that Bytedance could triple its revenue by the end of this year and continue its massive growth.

Questions. As such, TikTok is on the right track, and while it casts doubt on its policy to combat misinformation, it looks like it will be sane for a while. Time will tell if the Chinese social network finally dominates the social networking market and what the consequences will be if it does.

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