ByteDance’s TikTok is a force to reckon with in Vietnam

For 20-year-old Nguyen Ngoc Anh, a third-year student at the Da Nang University of Economics, the coolest trends among hip, young people in Vietnam are now on TikTok, not just from the legacy platforms Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

The short video app, which hosts clips that run for 15 to 60 seconds, was seemingly built for rapid virality. Hashtags such as #beautymirror, #rabbitdance, or #agechallenge are catching fire in Vietnam, and young people are adapting well to TikTok’s tools, picking up tricks to make their short videos snazzy and stand out from the crowd.

“You have to sing, dance, do something weird, cute, and you also need cool music and special effects,” said Ngoc Anh, who has been using the app for nearly one year – even before TikTok’s official launch in the country this past April.

Launched in 2016 by Beijing-based start-up ByteDance, TikTok, which has an equivalent but separate entity called Douyin in China, is already a global phenomenon, with about 500 million active monthly users in 154 countries.

Globally, it was the third most installed app in the first quarter of 2019, trailing after two communication apps, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. TikTok’s overseas expansion has been plotted carefully, including in Vietnam, where 72 per cent of the population own a smartphone.

“In Vietnam, it is clear that users can rapidly catch up with new trends. They are also highly open-minded about consuming and creating new kinds of creative content,” said Nguyen Lam Thanh, head of public policy for TikTok in Vietnam. “The need for interaction and sharing among the Vietnam community is considered high, compared to other countries in the region.”