TikTok is a Chinese social networking service and short-form online video platform. Users publish videos from three seconds to 60 minutes long through a mobile app or the website. Its parent company is ByteDance, which is based in Beijing. TikTok began in 2016 as a Chinese app named Douyin.
History of TikTok
Creator: ByteDance, founded by Zhang Yiming. Year: 2016.
ByteDance is based in Beijing. It launched Douyin on September 20, 2016. The app was first named A.me. It became Douyin in December 2016. Douyin took nearly seven months to build. It reached 100 million users in a year. Douyin means shaking sound in Chinese.
ByteDance made TikTok as the overseas version of Douyin. TikTok launched abroad in September 2017. On November 9, 2017, ByteDance paid nearly $1 billion for Musical.ly. Musical.ly was a video app with an office in Santa Monica, CA. The merger with Musical.ly followed in August 2018.
In October 2018, TikTok became the most downloaded app in the U.S. In February 2019, TikTok and Douyin together passed one billion downloads. In April 2020, TikTok passed two billion mobile downloads worldwide.1 Celebrities began using the app in 2018. Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk were two of them.
TikTok Ltd is registered in the Cayman Islands. It is based in Singapore and Los Angeles. Its subsidiaries work in Australia, the UK and Singapore. On January 22, 2026, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was formed. It handles TikTok and other ByteDance properties in the U.S.
In that joint venture, Oracle Corporation, MGX Fund Management and Silver Lake each hold 15%. ByteDance holds 19.9%. Michael Dell and Vastmere Strategic Investments share the other 35.1%. The platform faces criticism over data privacy, mental health and misinformation. A few countries, including India and Afghanistan, have banned it fully or partly.
Changelog and latest update
In January 2019, TikTok let creators put links to merchandise sales in their videos. In October 2021, TikTok tested a Tip button. The Tip button lets followers send money to creators. Accounts with at least 100,000 followers can turn it on.
TikTok uses recommendation algorithms. They show videos to users. The algorithms connect creators with new audiences. Viral trends spread through the app, in food, fashion and music.
TikTok's U.S. business was divested in 2026.2 The joint venture described above now runs the U.S. business. TikTok stays open to users in most countries.
Latest update: 2026 Economic Impact Report, travel data, 2026-10-06
The TikTok newsroom published a post on October 6, 2026. It covers Halloween travel. The post also uses data from the 2026 Economic Impact Report. That report says one in three TikTok users have made travel plans. The post is listed in the Community category. Its title names Halloween destinations inspired by FilmTok and BookTok. The post also says almost two in three users used TikTok to plan travel or local activities.
Usage examples
A website can show a public TikTok video with an embed block, link to a profile, or read video details from the oEmbed service that TikTok provides. The examples below show each method. The video ID and the profile name must match a public account before the embed loads.
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed"
cite="https://www.tiktok.com/
@user/video/VIDEO_ID"
data-video-id="VIDEO_ID">
<section></section>
</blockquote>
<script async
src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js">
</script>This block shows a public TikTok video on a web page. The embed.js script replaces the empty section with the video player. The cite value and the data-video-id value must both hold the ID of the same public video.
<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/
@example" rel="noopener">
Follow us on TikTok</a>This link sends a visitor to a public TikTok profile. The at sign in front of the name marks a profile address on TikTok. The rel value noopener keeps the new window from controlling the original page.
curl -s "https://www.tiktok.com/oembed\
?url=https://www.tiktok.com/\
@user/video/VIDEO_ID"This command asks the oEmbed service for a JSON summary of the video, including a title and an HTML snippet. A site can use the snippet to show the video without writing the embed code by hand. The URL parameter holds the full video address.
References
These sources are outside Websnoogie and were checked on 2026-10-12.
TikTok
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia entry on the short-video platform. It covers the Douyin origin in 2016, the 2017 international launch, the Musical.ly purchase, the download totals, the ownership structure, the 2026 joint venture and the criticism, with a list of sources. The article gives a source for each figure.
TikTok Newsroom
TikTok
The official news site from TikTok. It publishes dated posts on company reports, creator programs and seasonal topics. The October 6, 2026 Halloween travel post used for the latest update is listed on this page. Posts are listed by date.
TikTok Safety
TikTok
The safety page from TikTok. It describes the account controls, reporting tools and protections that the app offers to users. Site owners can read it to understand what visitors see when they open a shared video. The page is maintained by TikTok.
TikTok Support
TikTok
The official help center for the TikTok app and website. It explains how to create an account, manage videos and report content, and it gives the steps for the features that users meet from an embedded video or a shared link. The steps are listed in order.
Three checks before a TikTok link goes live
A single TikTok video can send a wave of visitors to one page in a day. Before that link goes in your bio, we check three things. First, the page loads quickly. Second, the page names your service on the first screen. Third, the phone number and the contact form both work. Skipping any one of these checks wastes the attention the video earned.
Our experience in web design runs past twenty years, and our company was founded in 2012. We apply the same checks to every build. Phone screens are where TikTok viewers land, so each page is built to read well at phone width. Clear words and large buttons matter most in that small space.
Pricing for a domain is $24.99, with hosting at $149 yearly. That hosting carries 99.999% uptime, so the link stays open while the video does its work. A new website is $300 one time, for as many as five pages and a contact form page. Most sites go live within 3 to 5 days.
Choose one video and one landing page, and we will test that path with you. Phone 402-813-4034 and describe the clip.
