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Aug 2, 2018 · Musical.ly users opened their phones to a surprise today as they found the app replaced with a new logo and name: TikTok. The app was acquired by Chinese company ByteDance in November 2017, which ...
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TikTok's history---especially in the U.S.---is a little misunderstood. It's commonly thought that "TikTok" was a rebrand of the Musical.ly app. That's sorta true, but there's a lot more to it than that.
The Musical.ly app was released in the U.S. back in 2014. It was created for people to make short 15-second to 1-minute lip-sync and dancing videos. Musical.ly slowly gained users until it skyrocketed in popularity in 2016 and 2017.
Meanwhile, a Chinese tech company named ByteDance launched TikTok in China in 2016. The app arrived in the U.S. in 2017. Around this same time, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for $1 billion. The two apps remained separate until they were merged in 2018.
So it's true that Musical.ly essentially became TikTok, but the two actually existed separately for a while. TikTok is not simply a rebranded version of Musical.ly.
When we talk about TikTok, there are actually two names to think about. The Chinese name is "Douyin," which translates to "shaking sound." When launching the app in other countries, ByteDance chose a different name.
There doesn't seem to be an official source on the meaning of the "TikTok" name, but it is said to represent the short, snappy videos on the platform. A reference to the tick-tocking sound of the second hand on a clock.
The TikTok logo appears to be a music note, but it's actually a stylized lowercase "d," a reference to the Chinese name of the app. Surprisingly, the logo hasn't really changed much over time: The resemblance to a music note is a nice coincidental nod to Musical.ly.
That's the story behind TikTok and its unusual name. The app has become so popular that other social media sites have tried to copy it, but they can't hold a candle to that "TikTok" name. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with Ke$ha's catchy song.
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Jul 9, 2024 · Musical.ly merged with TikTok on August 2, 2018, with existing data and accounts combined to create one app and an overall larger community. The name was kept as ‘TikTok,’ meaning the end of ...
Mar 2, 2023 · In the world of social media, TikTok has taken the world by storm. It's the most popular app for short-form videos, allowing users to create, edit, and share 15-second videos set to music. But for those who were around before TikTok's rise to fame, the app may seem familiar. That's because it used to be called Musical.ly. In this article, we'll explore the similarities and differences between ...
Nov 13, 2019 · Advertisement. In November 2017, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, spent up to $1 billion to acquire Musical.ly. ByteDance then combined the two applications in August 2018. However, as for ...
Musical.ly (pronounced "Musically", styled as musical.ly) was a social media service headquartered in Shanghai with an American office in Santa Monica, California, [1] on which platform users created and shared short lip-sync videos. The first prototype was released in April 2014, and then after that, the official version was launched in August 2014.
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Los Angeles, Aug. 1, 2018 – Today it was announced that two of the world’s fastest growing short-form video apps, musical.ly and TikTok, will unite to create a new global app. The newly upgraded platf