Nowadays, if you aren’t trying to be a YouTube sensation, are you even trying to be famous?

The drive to make it big on the internet might have something to do with the popularity of TikTok, the Chinese lip-syncing app that’s killing the competition on the App Store.

According to The Guardian, the app has been downloaded almost 80 million times. It was declared the number one app on the American App Store in October, beating YouTube, Facebook and Amazon, after it was downloaded four million times in the month.

So what exactly is it about this app that makes it so appealing?

First off, it has the support of Jimmy Fallon.

“What it is is you post short videos of you doing fun stuff like lip-syncing to a song or a movie clip or acting out a silly scene with your friends, or even your pets,” Fallon said by way of introduction on a segment on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this month.

…Fallon has since encouraged viewers to take part in a series of challenges, such as the #TumbleweedChallenge, where people are meant to stop what they’re doing and roll around on the ground like a tumbleweed while an old western movie soundtrack plays.

Here’s a look at the tumbleweed challenge:

Not as impressive as the hand swap challenge, but you do you.

The app isn’t groundbreaking, but it incorporates elements of other popular apps into one useable platform.

Part Instagram story, part Snapchat, and part Musical.ly, TikTok most closely resembles the concept of the dearly missed (and maybe returning) Vine.

Here’s a compilation of some cringy Tik Tok content:

So the filters aren’t great, and the content is a little weird, but people love it.

As the Atlantic pointed out last month, one of the more engaging aspects of the US version of the app has revolved around so-called cringe videos. Videos that are “so painful and embarrassing that a viewer can’t help but laugh”.

Not all of the videos are cringeworthy, though. Some folks have actually managed to make something interesting:

That box one at the start is pretty cool.

“We’re living in a world where on social media, it’s about showing your perfect self – not your real self,” Stefan Heinrich, TikTok’s head of global marketing recently told Variety. “What I love about TikTok is that people show their real side.”

If your ‘real-side’ is best represented by rolling around on the floor, you might want to rethink some of your life choices.

Like most video apps, TikTok is quickly becoming a way to make serious cash. Here’s ABC:

Popular users can also earn via TikTok livestreams. Once they buy in-app currency — 100 coins currently cost $1.29; 10,000 cost $134.99 — users can purchase an emoji to give to their favourite stars. These gifts can then be converted back into cash.

While still an emerging platform for advertisers, we can expect popular TikTok users to start getting offers from brands looking for ambassadors to endorse their merch.

The only thing we know for sure about TikTok is that the internet is going to gain plenty of stupid video content, which was already rather easy to come by.

[source:guardian&abc]