Trump lawsuit sees TikTok unveil global numbers at last

TikTok has opened up about its user numbers as part of its lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s plan to ban it over alleged data-sharing with the Chinese government.

In its court filing, the popular Chinese app said it has been downloaded 2 billion times globally by August 2020 and last month (July) had 689.1 million monthly active users (MAUs).

In January 2018 it had 54.7 million MAUs around the world.

That jumped to 271.1 million by December 2018, and 507.5 million by December 2019.

In the US the social video app has about 100 million MAUs (up nearly 800% from January 2018 when it was 11.2 million) and 50 million daily active users.

TikTok lags behind Facebook which reported 2.7 billion global MAUs in its Q2 earnings in July.

But TikTok executives would be probably more interested in looking at figures for US-based Triller, which it regards as its closest rival.

Triller’s investors include Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd, Marshmello, Lil Wayne, Juice WRLD, Young Thug, Kendrick Lamar, Tyga, TI, Jake Paul and Troy Carter.

Triller has 70 million MAUs, with a total of 250 million downloads worldwide, and claiming a 500% month-over-month growth.

But the US app has been storming ahead internationally.

It has tied up licensing deals with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group, giving its users an extensive catalogue of music to use with their creations.

This week it announced a partnership with South Asian streaming service JioSaavn, providing content for each other  “(a fresh format of ‘collective discovery’ for new-age content creators” said Triller CEO Mike Lu) as a way to quickly grow subscriber numbers.

In February 2020, Roy Morgan Research announced that TikTok was being used over 1.6 million Australians — equivalent to 7% of the population aged 6 years and older.

Obviously that figure would have bounded up after the pandemic lock-ins.

But the Morgan figures showed that 1.1 million of Australian users were females.

In terms of age groups, the top number of users with 21% are Generation Alpha (born from 2006) and followed with 14% by Generation Z (born 1991-2005) as the second largest demo.