Facebook, Twitter market share shrink as TikTok surges ahead in India

The popular short video app TikTok has taken India by storm with its user base now over 200 million as the 15-second vertical video format app continues to surge ahead of social media networking giants Facebook and Twitter.

Owned by Beijing-based Bytedance, the app has a majority of its users between the ages of 18 and 35 years, and in the 18 months till August 2019, its reach rose to 28% from 1.12% in January last year according to a report by the market intelligence firm Kalagato.

This is a significant rise when compared to social media networking platforms Facebook and Twitter. Facebook's reach saw a marginal increase to 80% from 75% in January 2018 whereas Twitter saw a dip of 3% in its reach by August.

In terms of social media market share, TikTok was among the few apps which gained significant market share rise of about 13%. Both Facebook and Twitter lost over 40% of their market share in this period.

Linkedin, Helo and ShareChat were among the other social media apps that gained market share.

However, in terms of monthly active users (MAUs), out of 550 million internet-connected smartphones, Facebook and Instagram together command over 350 million mobile MAUs in the country. TikTok's MAUs grew to 68 million from 38 million in Jan 2018.

Linkedin, Sharechat and Twitter also saw a rise in the number of monthly active users.

TikTok is the second most popular platform in terms of the amount of time spent by users. According to the report, a user spent 44 minutes of the day on Facebook, whereas TikTok grabbed 34 minutes of the user's time every day. Surprisingly, Likee emerged as the third social media platform to gain user time.

Over the years, TikTok app has grown in popularity. In September, it had emerged as the most downloaded social media app worldwide.

The app was downloaded about 60 million times last month, as per Sensor Tower data. Most of the installs were contributed by India, which accounted for 44% of its total downloads.