What is TikTok?

TikTok is the leading destination for creating and discovering real, interesting, and fun short-form mobile videos that will make your day. Our mission is to inspire and enrich people’s lives by offering a home for creative expression and an experience that is genuine, joyful, and positive. We want to empower users to make the most out of every moment in their lives, creating videos that are exciting, spontaneous, and authentic. At the same time, we also want to inspire and enrich our audience who watch the huge diversity of creative short videos on the platform.

TikTok is both a place for everyone to express their authentic selves, as well as everyone’s daily destination to sit back and enjoy bite-sized videos that make your day.

TikTok features 

What sets TikTok apart is the firm focus on creativity and the creative process. TikTok’s technology gives users a platform to allow everyone to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and moments that matter in everyday life, straight from their smartphones.

TikTok offers a vast array of tools including various filters, stickers, music options and special effects among other features which allow users to produce truly entertaining and polished videos straight from their smartphone.

On TikTok, all users have to do is watch, engage with what they like, skip what they don’t, and  find an endless stream of short videos that feel personalized just for you. The “For You” feed offers a curation of video recommendations personalized to each user based on their viewing preferences. This is because of our strong recommendation engine that creates an individualized feed highlighting video content based on the types of videos users like, instead of serving up videos from only the popular, big-name users on the platform.

To ensure full personalization, TikTok offers a fully Arabized User Experience – Arabic trending content is heroed, Arabic content creators are spotlighted. This enables users in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to discover content that is culturally relevant to them, allowing for a more engaging experience.

Additionally, TikTok’s integrated editing tools allow users to easily trim, cut, merge and duplicate video clips without leaving the app. There is a wide variety of filters, effects, and AR objects to take videos to the next level.

Music is a special part of TikTok’s creative DNA. With a huge variety of music for TikTok users around the world to discover and use in their videos, each video has its own unique finishing touch.

Ensuring a safe environment

Promoting a safe and positive app experience is TikTok’s top priority and we offer both in-app tools and educational content to provide users with all the information needed to have the best possible experience while enjoying their time within the TikTok community.

As we continue to nurture our growing diverse global community, we will carry on launching new tools and industry-leading features to support the creation of a positive and safe app environment, where users can express themselves and have fun. These safety features are:

• Restricted Viewing Mode: This feature limits the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences, once activated. This tool, powered by AI, let users take control of the content they watch.
• Comment Filters: TikTok’s comment control feature allows users to better manage comments, by filtering those containing words they deem undesirable. Users can filter almost any keyword they want, blocking comments about race, religion, gender, politics and more. The feature is currently not available in Arabic but is being looked into.
• Screen Time Management: The Screen Time Management feature offers a new way to give TikTok users and parents more options to select from in terms of the time spent on the app. Users and parents can select new time limits of 40, 60, 90 or 120 minutes and decide how much time they want to spend on the app per day. This feature is password protected, valid for 30 days. If users reach their screen time limit they will need to enter a password to continue to use TikTok.
• In-app reporting: This in-app function allows users to report any objectionable content or behavior for TikTok to action in real-time.
• Privacy controls: All users can choose to set an account as private which means that only users approved as followers can see the user’s content. Additionally, users can also choose to make a specific video private, which will become visible only to the creator. TikTok is constantly optimizing its privacy features allowing users to have better control over their online activities by deciding who can send them comments, messages or block specific users.
• TikTok Safety Center: The Safety Centre is a localized website that consists of safety policies, tools and resources to equip users with product education and protection measures when using TikTok.
• Age Gate: TikTok has a minimum age requirement of 13 years old to login and create an account on TikTok, to ensure that underage users do not use the platform.

Additionally, the TikTok team has a moderation team who works around the clock to remove inappropriate content and terminate the accounts that violate their Terms of Service.

TikTok challenges and campaigns

TikTok is inspiring and encouraging a new generation to have a positive impact on the planet and those around them. It is a great platform for driving initiatives on social responsibility.

There has already been a series of “TikTok for Good” campaigns such as #SaveOurOceans demonstrating how TikTok users are taking action to protect the planet.

Many Saudi influencers participated in the Food Toker challenge through which they created food related videos for their fans to vote for, choosing their favorite ones. Other successful campaigns on TikTok include #forclimate and #saveouroceans. These campaigns were aimed at showcasing the impacts of extreme weather and ocean pollution and were encouraging people to make a difference or a positive change.

Additionally, TikTok celebrated the Saudi National day with #اليوم_الوطني_السعودي and this initiative has reached 174.5 million views; it also collaborated with hugely popular Saudi YouTuber ITSOZX to launch a brand new pop song and music video on TikTok.

Global presence

TikTok has a highly-engaged user base with a community spanning over 150 countries and 75 languages. It has global offices including Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, and Tokyo. www.tiktok.com.