TikTok has passed 1 billion users | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
TikTok said Monday it has passed 1 billion monthly users. It’s a remarkable number for a platform launched in August 2018 that has been scrutinized by governments — including the US — that are worried about the data collection practices of its parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance.
TikTok’s popularity soared during the pandemic, becoming the most-downloaded app in the world in the first quarter of 2020, with some 315 million downloads in that quarter alone according to app analytics company SensorTower.
ByteDance reportedly saw its 2020 revenue more than double from the year prior, to $34.3 billion. From its launch to date, SensorTower says TikTok installs have reached 3.2 billion, which includes information from Douyin, the Chinese…
