TikTok Crosses 1.5 Billion App Downloads Thanks To Indian Users, And Facebook Should Be Worried

Love it or hate it, you definitely at least know about TikTok. And clearly it's not something you can ignore, because the app just hit 1.5 billion downloads across the world.

And guess who's leading the charge on that? Yup, it's all of us here in India.

Images courtesy: Reuters

That download milestone is across both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. Most interesting of course is that 466.8 million of those downloads are from Indian users, making us responsible for about 31 percent of all of TikTok's unique installs.

According to app research firm Sensor Tower, TikTok hit 614 million downloads this year. That's 6 percent more than it had by the same point last year with a promise it will surpass 2018's total.

India has been the biggest driver of TikTok's popularity, giving it 466.8 million downloads. China generated the second-most downloads, with 173.2 million or 11.5 percent. The US came in third, with 123.8 million downloads, or 8.2 percent. And that's not even including third party Android installs. Specifically, India drove up 277.6 million downloads so far this year, roughly 45 percent of all global installs for the app this year.

TikTok, Sensor Tower says, is currently the third-most downloaded non-gaming app this year, behind only WhatsApp and Messenger, and ahead of both Facebook and Instagram.

So like it or not, TikTok is clearly the newest social media craze on the block. Whether or not it endures depends on a lot of factors obviously. However, given that it's been around and rapidly growing for over a year now, odds are it's here to stay.

So do existing social media platforms have to worry? Some of them at least certainly do. Facebook for one might be the most threatened here. In the recent past, there was already a shift seeing younger generations skip over Facebook in favour of Instagram and Twitter. That shift was rapidly inflamed by the variety of privacy violations at the hands of Facebook, which has seen everyone except the "boomer" generation moving away from Zuckerberg's baby.

Similarly, Instagram has seen a drop-off lately. Some of this might be Instagram's connection to the bruised Facebook, though it's likely a lot of it is thanks to sheer stagnation. Instagram has had limited potential to improve and reinvent itself, and there's only so much you can satisfy people with just endless photos and video to scroll through.

Twitter might be the only platform here not necessarily threatened by TikTok. Both have cool videos you can watch, both have a strong meme culture. And while TikTok has a firm grip on Generation Z, Twitter has shown itself capable of holding onto millennials and older, despite all its flaws. Not to mention its unofficial role as a disburser of news.

So at the very least, Mark Zuckerberg has got to be very worried. And boy does it show.