Viral video app TikTok grows by drawing in celebrities around the world

Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk have become the latest stars to join TikTok, the Chinese short-video app that has already reached 6 million users in the US.

It’s trending among teenagers around the world: TikTok lets users create video under a minute long and add funky visual effects. Known as Douyin in China, it’s owned by Chinese startup Bytedance, also behind the news aggregator.

Fallon, anchor of popular talk show The Tonight Show, has already ramped up an astonishing 10.4 million fans for its  #Tumbleweeding skit, a TikTok challenge in which (for reasons unclear to us) people roll around the floor with Western music playing in the background.

The TV host and skateboarding star are just the latest high-profile individuals joining the platform, which has been growing incredibly quickly. After Musical.ly and TikTok merged in August, the app hit #1 in the App Store at the end of October.

In fact, TikTok’s virulent spread in the US has become a discussion topic in itself – but not for positive reasons. The platform has become sort of a meme after YouTube users complained of being bombarded with TikTok ads.

This meme sums up how users feel about the constant flow of TikTok ads on YouTube. / Image credit: Nathan Baker/Medium

The marketing campaign to drive app installations which used TikTok clips was so large that some YouTube users started creating TikTok cringe compilations – which, as the name implies, features the most cringe-worthy moments from the social app.

However, others have been wondering how big TikTok’s marketing budget actually is.

The US is not the only country where TikTok has been attracting celebrities. One of TikTok’s first international markets was Japan, where it landed last summer and became the most downloaded app in just a few months.

However, the task was not easy. TikTok already had around 300 popular influencers in the Chinese version of their app, Douyin, but international markets needed different faces. Finally, the platform managed to rope in its first celeb, the Japanese model and actress Kinoshita Yukina. After that came the kawaii princess of J-Pop, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and comedian Watanabe Naomi.

Princess of J-Pop, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu / Photo credit: Shutterstock