Tik Tok related Questions and Answers Why TikTok is called TikTok? The name TikTok is meant to suggest the short format of the videos. Launched in 2016 by the Chinese startup company ByteDance, it's known as Douyin. Its stratospheric growth in usage really began in late 2017, when it acquired a rival app, Musical.ly, and ported over its 200 million account list to TikTok. What is the purpose of TikTok? TikTok is a social media platform for creating, sharing, and discovering short videos. The app is used by young people as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing and allows users to create videos and share them across a community. Is TikTok harmful? TikTok has developed a bad reputation for hosting dangerous viral "challenges" on its app, which at their worst, have led to severe injury or death — as in the case of the blackout challenge that prompted Italian regulators to take action against the social network t...