TikTok’s Toilsome Virality; Olympians’ Personal Videos Break Out

From the outside, TikTok’s four-year ascent can seem almost serendipitous or out of the blue. But Chris Stokel-Walker’s new book “TikTok Boom” goes further than any other journalist to capture the astounding amount of work by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to make the viral-video app go viral.

TikTok today might qualify as a user-generated content platform like YouTube and Instagram, but in the early days it was far from it. For instance, ByteDance initially flooded the Indian version of the app with fake accounts to spread videos TikTok’s staff deemed entertaining. Then TikTok started paying thousands of dollars to lure Indian video influencers on Instagram. And after the influencers arrived, the company ramped up spending on ads to boost downloads. In that country, at least, the successful effort was all for naught: India banned TikTok last year amid a wave of moves against Chinese apps. But the formula worked in other countries, most importantly the U.S.