This archive report was first published on 5 January 2022.
Cloudflare's analysis of web traffic in 2021 revealed a significant shift in the most visited websites and social media platforms. For the first time, Facebook and Google have been dethroned as the most popular destinations on the internet, with TikTok taking the top spot.
According to Cloudflare, TikTok's growth has been nothing short of exceptional. Launched by ByteDance in 2016, it took over a year for the company to acquire Musical.ly, after which its user base started growing exponentially. The COVID-19 pandemic and increased marketing campaigns in 2020 created a perfect recipe for the platform to take off outside of China.
Cloudflare reports that TikTok never rose higher than position 7 in web traffic until the turn of 2021. However, on February 17, 2021, TikTok briefly took the top spot, and by August 10, 2021, it had taken the lead on most days.
Cloudflare's João Tomé and Sofia Cardita noted that the top spot exchanged hands a few times between Google and TikTok in the months of October and November, but the Chinese app dominated on most days, including Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
Top Ten Most Visited Internet Sites in 2021 ¶
- TikTok
- Microsoft
- Apple
- Amazon
- Netflix
- YouTube
Top Ten Most Visited Social Media Platforms in 2021 ¶
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Quora
Despite TikTok's massive growth, Facebook still remains the most widely used social network, with 2.9 billion monthly active users and 1.9 billion daily users, according to Meta's company regulatory filings.
Cloudflare reports that more than 1 billion users sign on to the TikTok platform monthly, the majority of which are children and teenagers. This age demographic attracts entertainers whose audience falls in line with the group.
TikTok has faced controversy, with calls to protect teenagers and children from harmful unregulated content and to curb addiction to the social media platform. Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy, stated, 'TikTok is about entertainment and bringing joy… You put a premium on authentic content, uplifting content. But like all entertainment, you want to watch with moderation, and we put tools in place, take-a-break video, screen time management, and tools for parents like family pairing to make sure that they can have conversations and do what's right for their family and their teenagers.'
It is worth noting that TikTok is not available in China, as it has content that does not comply with Chinese laws. Instead, it has a sister app called Douyin that is pretty much the same, except its contents abide by the laws in the country.
