A Rough Timeline of TikTok’s Rise And (Maybe?) Fall

The social media platform TikTok as a brand has only been around for about seven or eight years.

Yet in that short time it has completely taken over the minds of users, business owners, advertisers, and especially elected officials. And now, despite generating billions of dollars in annual revenue, it may be on its way out.

How did we get here? And more importantly, why do you feel this is happening forever? The answer probably lies in how quickly TikTok’s monetization business has grown alongside (and perhaps despite) all the banning efforts.

Beginnings

Ironically, TikTok’s success was born, phoenix-like, from the shutdown of another app: Musical.ly, which launched in 2014. three months the Shanghai-based lip sync platform gained over 4.6 million monthly active users, more than Twitter’s Periscope at the time. IN two yearsit has already been used in branded promotional campaigns.

Meanwhile, in 2016, ByteDance released its own short video app for the Chinese market called Douyin. For the first time, TikTok appeared, a version intended for an international audience Indonesia a year later and it started to spread from there.

just at that time ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $1 billion and then consolidated its users and content to TikTok starting August 2018. Less than six months laterTikTok has already tested ad units and launched its first in 2019 beta advertising platform to a selected group of traders.

Controversy

Every successful social media platform inspires some hand-wringing — but TikTok began facing intense scrutiny almost right out of the gate.

In February 2019, the FTC slammed TikTok and Fined $5.7 millionthen the largest civil penalty in a child privacy case, for illegally collecting personal information from children while still operating as Musical.ly.

That same year, several countries took turns temporarily banning the app for reasons related to pornography and child safety. India would eventually make it permanent ban in 2020, not long after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers has exacerbated already tense relations between the two countries.

They weren’t the only ones with military concerns. In December 2019, the Pentagon recommended against downloading TikTok on government-issued phones, which caused US Army and navy enact official bans on the grounds that the app poses a security threat.

But it was only after India’s overnight ban on June 29, 2020 that the US government proposed to block the app for civilians as well.

Trump administration

At this point, things got a little messy.

July 7, 2020 – The day before TikTok finally announced its first self-service advertising platform for Business – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo he told Fox News that a potential ban is “something we’re looking at.” This was confirmed by President Trump interview soon after, he said he wanted to retaliate against China for its perceived role in the COVID-19 pandemic.

On August 6, the White House issued an implementing regulation order banning US transactions and new TikTok downloads to begin within the next 45 days. Another followed eight days later implementing regulation that gave ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of all TikTok-related assets—perhaps to Microsoft, which had has already made an offer.

But on September 20, Trump postponed a last-minute ban, giving tentative approval to a joint sale by Oracle and Walmart. A week later, the execution was again stayed at the eleventh hour when US District Judge Carl Nichols granted TikTok partial command.

A series of back-and-forths followed as the Trump administration half-heartedly appealed and other federal judges followed suit until all efforts were blocked. collapsed in December.

And in the meantime, TikTok will have plenty of room to expand ad targeting abilities a go after media budgets.

Biden administration

Although President Biden has previously commented his own worries o TikTok tried to close the loop during his campaign by reversing Trump’s executive order one of his own in June 2021.

But the peace was not to last. (And that probably didn’t help Buzzfeed news found evidence that ByteDance employees in China were still accessing data from US customers in 2022).

Starting in December 2022, all kinds of legislative attempts to restrict TikTok began to make their way through Congress; one, directly named No TikTok Law on Government Devicesit was actually signed into law that year.

In 2023, Montana became the first state approve legislation which banned TikTok from app stores and all personal devices, not just government ones — although U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy blocked the ban before it entered into force on 1 January 2024.

All along, TikTok has been making a name for itself in the e-commerce and advertising industry. The tags were back in the app in large; so do shoppers, thanks to trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt. By 2023, TikTok’s business was in the US valued at $40-50 billion, while parent company ByteDance was valued at $220 billion.

But finally came The Big One: the The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Actwhich prohibits the distribution of apps from countries “designated as foreign adversaries,” meaning TikTok. After passing the House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support, the bill landed on President Joe Biden’s desk on April 24 and was unceremoniously signed into law.

Since then, TikTok has had the sword of Damocles hanging over it like a video you can’t scroll past. Despite the rumors o.a possible sale ByteDance apparently has no plans to get rid of Elon Musk. Federal judges and the Supreme Court on Friday he followed the law as written. However, Biden will not pursue a ban on his leaving the White House confirmed on Friday. The ban is due to start on Sunday. Trump’s inauguration is on Monday.

So what next? Who knows. All anyone has accomplished in the past few months is speculate and prepare for the worst.

On the other hand, at least those are two things that Ad Tech Land does pretty well.