Wearing a sloth floating suit, she opened the camera application on her iPhone 8plus. Once she had all the proper settings on, she placed it on the dining table and pushed the record button. And without putting much effort into it, she started lip-syncing to an audio that had already been recorded by another TikToker.
Boglarka “Bogi” Virag, a thirty-year-old Hungarian woman and CCD student, discovered TikTok as a new social media platform to express her personality and creativity. While it only started as a way for her to connect with her little sister, TikTok became the “go-to” app for entertainment.
“I wanted to connect with my little sister at first, then I stopped doing it, and heard about it again from my roommate…. I got obsessed and literally, laughing my ass off watching the videos, and then I started making my own,” Bogi explained.
TikTok is a widely popular video-sharing app that used to be called Musical.ly. According to teen vogue, this app has surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat just a year after it was launched, with more than one billion downloads worldwide.
According to Oberlo.com, TikTok aims to “capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone.” Data on wallaroomedia.com shows that TikTok has over 1 billion users and that the app is opened by users 8 times per day on average. It is also mentioned that about 83% of TikTok users have posted at least one video, as of February 2020.
Today, Bogi has 3,912 followers and 13.4K likes on her videos. Despite the high number of followers and likes she has gathered; she does not plan on taking her TikTok experience to the professional level. She feels that becoming a professional “TikToker” would add too much pressure and take away some of the fun she has while making the videos.
Since she does not personally know many of her followers, she feels that she can be whoever she wants and enjoy acting and role-playing videos on TikTok. A big advantage of TikTok according to Bogi is an opportunity to network depending on your field of work. She made connections with different people from different places.
Another way of connecting with other people is by going live on TikTok. “As soon as you hit a thousand followers, you can start a live stream and communicate with them. I sometimes even asked for their Snapchat or Instagram tag,” Bogi explained. “There are ways to make money on TikTok,” Bogi mentioned.
Although she is still unclear on how that system works, she mentioned that many do it by adding their Venmo account in their account bio. Some companies that sell products or people who sell services have also started to promote their products through the app. They usually do so by putting up their advertisement videos or by having well-known actresses or actors help promote through their personal TikTok accounts.
When she first discovered TikTok, Bogi thought it was an app for young people only. However, she soon realized that there are users from various age ranges. In her opinion, TikTok is heading to be the biggest social media platform. Based on a survey done by Pew Research Center in July 2019, about 40% of TikTok users are between the ages of 10 and 19, 26.1% are between 20 and 29 years old, 10.2% are between 30 and 39, and 16.8% are between 40 and 49 years old.
A survey regarding TikTok use was also conducted at the Community College of Denver. A total of 15 were asked whether they have the app downloaded on their phones. Seven of them said that they have downloaded TikTok and four out of the seven students also said that they make videos on it. Eight students out of the 15, said that they do not have TikTok downloaded but they watch it through Instagram or the TikTok videos compilation on YouTube.
Generation Z was born with new media evolving and improving. They know a lot about new upgrades and what’s ‘popping.’ “People want to see live videos, Instagram stories, Snapchat, and TikTok. They don’t want to sit and read captions,” Bogi said. Walking towards the modern era, people are more into video forms.
Bogi believes that for anyone looking to make it big in the media industry, platforms like TikTok is a place to start establishing an online presence and build an army of followers, that will also follow you when it’s time for bigger platform such as YouTube or even national TV.
“I gained followers on my photography Instagram account because of TikTok. I linked my Instagram account on TikTok, and people started to see my artworks,” Bogi shared. For her, it is not about making money on TikTok, but it is about how you make connection, promote your profile, express yourself, and build an audience.