The Man Behind TikTok

While TikTok has become the definitive social media platform for Gen Z, exploding in popularity in recent months, founder Zhang Yiming prefers to stay out of the limelight.

- Oliver Featherston

With millions of people around the world stuck in isolation over the past few months, many of us have had to find new ways to occupy our time, with the condition that it can be done from home. Some turned to making their own sourdough starters or soda bread, while online platforms offering official qualifications reported a surge in enrolments.

But many others, it seems, decided to dive into TikTok. The video editing and sharing app has been used to document the age of COVID-19 on a personal level, with some lamenting the loss of social lives, others satirizing the ubiquity of video conferencing, and a number providing valuable health and safety advice. The app itself has even worked to promote official advice from the World Health Organization and local health authorities.

In the first three months of 2020 alone, TikTok brought in more than 315 million new users, setting a record for the most downloads any app has ever had in a single quarter. At the time of print, the #quarantine hashtag on TikTok has racked up 59.8 billion views. But as much as COVID-19 may have driven thousands online in the search for distractions, TikTok’s popularity is hardly a nascent trend. The app quietly began life as Douyin (as it’s known in China) in 2016, but its sudden and meteoric rise in popularity saw it merge with US app Musical.ly in 2018, and it achieved huge success with millennials and gen Z.

But what of the man behind it? Often described in the media as ‘private’ and ‘secretive’, Zhang Yiming, the Founder and CEO of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, prefers to keep a low profile, despite the massive success of his ventures.