TikTok is becoming Amazon for Gen Z
There has been some mind-blowing news in the TikTok front over the past few months. Reading through all of them made me realize: TikTok is on its way to becoming THE Amazon for Gen Z, and possibly even replacing Amazon in the long run.
Here are the reasons why:
Gen Z: Traditional retail websites are boring
Happening in China already: Alibaba had a terrible "single-digit" GMV growth according to last month's earnings.
According to Daniel Zhang, Alibaba's chair and chief executive, the reason for this is a slowdown in sales.
Not so fast: Many analysts don't seem to agree.
The social media shoppable livestream market is booming, for example. According to PingAn Securities, the value of goods sold through livestreams hosted will double this year to $313 billion. In comparison, traditional online shopping will grow at "only" 15 percent.
The reason for the large disparity in growth: “It’s not as fun to spend time on Taobao as Kuaishou and Douyin,” according to Jessy Zhang, a Chinese e-commerce analyst. By the way, Taobao is the Chinese version of Alibaba (owned by Alibaba), whereas Douyin is the Chinese name for TikTok.
Looks like Gen Z doesn't simply want to shop; they want to shop while having fun.
TikTok continues to break records in terms of downloads and watch time
Watch time: In November, TikTok surpassed Instagram as the most-used app among teens in the US. TikTok also overtook YouTube in terms of average watch time in the US and the UK back in September.
Users: TikTok has also been Apple's most downloaded iOS app for 202. By 2022, they'll likely surpass 1.5 billion active users. Just for a comparison, Instagram recently hit 2 billion active users.
Overall traffic: According to a Cloudflare article published a week ago, TikTok was the most popular domain in 2021, surpassing Google which finished second. Let that sink in for a bit.
2022 will be the year where TikTok competes with Instagram for the title of second largest social network.
TikTok is already being used to turn products into Amazon bestsellers
Multiple products have become best-sellers as a result of a one or more viral videos on TikTok:
- The BookTok trend has helped books get back to the top of bestseller lists
- Over 175 songs that trended on TikTok in 2021 charted on the Billboard Hot 100, twice as many as last year.
- TikTok's favorite beauty items are quickly becoming Amazon's best sellers.
#TikTokMadeMeBuyit is a popular hashtag that refers to this trend.
Amazon continues to sabotage sellers
They're taking bigger fees from sellers, making their search results pay-to-play and have their "Amazon's Choice" results increasingly being manipulated.
It appears that Amazon is approaching the point where starting out as a small seller will be really, really expensive.
In comparison, TikTok is just getting started:
TikTok recently launched a stand-alone shopping app in China
Ten days ago, TikTok has created a stand-alone shopping app to take on Alibaba, JD and Pinduoduo in the Chinese market.
The app is rapidly getting traction and ranking #6 among all iOS shopping apps in China.
...and they're moving slowly to the West
Back in September, TikTok launched several shopping features for their app.
They've also recently started experimenting with live shopping by hosting an online live shopping event in December.
TikTok also wants businesses to have their own separate profiles. They're currently testing a "Business Registration" feature, where businesses will get access to features that other users don' have.
Will TikTok also launch an international standalone shopping app in 2022? If things keep going at this rate, I'd bet my money on it.
If TikTok keeps growing faster than Instagram, they'll undoubtedly become the second-largest social network in 2022.
According to App Annie, Instagram and TikTok are growing at about the same rate. So TikTok will prob remain as #3 through 2022.
Instagram has reached 2billion monthly active users, hard to beat that in a short time. But Tiktoks rise hab been a truly fascinating story to watch.
TikTok has global reach. Insta is catered to the American audience - with FB being the global arm.
TikTok feels like it has more cultural influence - meme, songs, trends. It's the place to get discovered. Wild.
The recent Cloudflare article on TikTok beating Google in overall traffic pretty much sums where things are at the moment.
that stat is inacurate. The tiktok app pings more to server. That stats is useless. People might be spending more time on google and their ecosystems etc.
Agree.
Many people trust it, but Cloudflare stat ( like tiktok is no.1 site ) is not accurate. It is far away from real.
Yeah that stat was crazy.
TikTop https://tiktop.io/buy-tiktok-views/ is a very effective website recommended for gaining TikTok views and followers. This is amazing and so easy to use.
I can't believe TikTok beat Google.
Btw, how did they measure this? Is there any specific metric like MAU, etc. ?
Interesting discuss. I don't know about thes
The problem is that TikTok targets Gen-Z
Amazon targets millenials, generation X and boomers.
Let's see what the next move will be
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A question from a newbie here, if you have to start from zero now and you have to choose, Instagram or TikTok as you main social media account?
depending on your target market.
Mainly Millennial and GenZ, US market.
both - just post the same content. Consider it doubling your chance at going viral. That's your goal imo
Nice one!
I would love to know more about your journey. I have started the same program to run my own PL on amazon. I'm getting guidance from online site.
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it's dumb but addictive - and tiktok does it the best.
This comment was deleted a year ago.