TikTok, a short video service platform run by Byte Dance in China, surpassed Google and became the world’s No. 1 most visited site this year.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 22nd (local time) that Cloud Flare, a company that has been counting Internet traffic, said TikTok, ranked seventh last year, attracted the largest number of visitors this year. Google, which ranked first last year, fell to second place behind TikTok. TikTok topped the monthly number of visitors for the first time in February, and has given up the position to Google since March.Cloud Flare explained that it has maintained the top spot since recapturing the lead again in August.
The country with the largest number of TikTok connections was the United States (44.04%). TikTok was urged by the U.S. administration to sell its business in the U.S. for security reasons, but was allowed to operate normally in the U.S. with the inauguration of the Joe Biden administration. Following the U.S., France (8.13 percent), Germany (6.47%), and Brazil (5.82%) had a large number of connections. The amount of access to China was not included in the tally.
TikTok earlier said in September that the number of monthly active users (MAU) exceeded 1 billion.
The third largest number of users was Facebook on the meta platform, followed by Microsoft (MS), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Instagram, which ranked in the top 10 last year, was not listed on this year’s ranking table.
Netflix, which gained popularity for its original drama “Squid Game,” took over the video streaming site with the largest number of visitors. It was followed by YouTube, Loku, HBO Max, and Hulu. All of these companies are headquartered in the United States.
Cloud Flare said on February 2 that the number of visitors was the highest on YouTube among all sites. On this day, after the Myanmar coup, a video of an instructor doing aerobics in front of the military became popular. Cloud Flare explained that the Super Bowl of the U.S. professional football tournament was held in February, and that the video of “Baby Shark” by Korean educational brand Pink Pong exceeded Puerto Rican singer Luis Foncy’s “Despacito” music video view count.
Many people accessed the chat site in the order of WhatsApp operated by Meta, Telegram with high security, WeChat of Tencent China, and signals that encrypt and transmit all communications.
Cloud Flare is a U.S. company that stores content data on distributed servers and delivers it to users. Since September last year, the number of visitors has been counted using data from Internet traffic patterns around the world.
