Ebook: TikTok Boom: China's Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media

'It is rare for a business analysis to read like a thriller – this one does.' – Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View

'Vital to understanding how[TikTok] works and the impact it's having.' – Damian Collins MP, former chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee

'TikTok Boom is a must read for students, scholars, and policy makers.' – David Craig, Clinical Professor, USC Annenberg

Every day hundreds of millions of teenagers are gripped by its brief videos, powered by a secretive algorithm that can propel a meme or or a user or a product to global stardom within minutes. Multi-national businesses are scrambling to harness its raw marketing power.

TikTok is a cultural hurricane, making instant hits of new and long-fogotten songs, books and TV shows, and a constant political and social commentary, playing out every minute of the day in tens of millions of videos.

TikTok is also the first app outside the United States to challenge Silicon Valley's dominance of social media. Aware of the Chinese app's challenge to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok. TikTok is already banned in India.

TikTok Boom reveals how TikTok has spread exponentially in the West since its launch in 2017. Its owner, ByteDance, wants to become China's answer to Google and has rolled out TikTok using smart tactics revealed for the first time in the book.

Using a range of sources deep inside and outside ByteDance, TikTok Boom reveals the story of its founder Yiming Zhang and its origin in another app in China, Douyin. It follows the social media battle between short-form video apps and TikTok's final triumph after its merger with Musical.ly. It offers never-before-seen insights into TikTok's new influencer ecosystem. And it charts the increasing superpower tech rivalry between China and the West which is posing questions about TikTok's safety.

TikTok Boom's author Chris Stokel-Walker has interviewed scores of people connected to the world's hottest app, including current and former employees, and some of TikTok's biggest names in front of and behind the lens. He explores the culture of ByteDance and finds out what has happened to its founder, Yiming Zhang, as the Chinese Communist Party seeks to reel in the country's runaway tech industry.

TikTok Boom is a nuanced, informed and incisive read on the characters and strategies behind the world's new tech order, in a gripping read that has won plaudits from technologists. It's rich peopled with characters. TikTok Boom is the essential book for anyone who wants to know what TikTok's success means for culture, technology, geopolitics, marketing and advertising.

Find out where TikTok came from and where it's going. Find out how TikTok Works and whether it can work for you.

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'A careful, detailed teardown of the people, culture and...