TikTok takes television, YouTube Rewind 2018 is the most disliked video ever! Burger King trolled Kanye, Amazon stands alone as the top Smart Speaker in the UK and US

TikTok takes television

TikTok – the mobile app that boasts a myriad of short-form videos – has launched a new TV campaign in the UK, ready for Christmas.

The video app has been expanding rapidly for the past two years, seemingly being the most popular app amongst teens. It is the star app of ByteDance, a Chinese company who bought Musical.ly in 2017 and rebranded it as TikTok.

The premise of the app is as simple as it gets: users create 15 second music videos showing their creativity and ability to show off their hidden talents. But what’s different is that users can create duets and be part of their friends’ videos working together to create something creative and new. At this moment in time, TikTok has over 500 million users and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. The app is doing so well that Facebook has launched a copycat app ‘Lasso’, in order to get in on the action.

It looks as though the UK is the target market of interest for the company and that is why they have ordered the production of the TV ad just a few days before Christmas. The TV ad is encouraging users to get creative while setting up their Christmas decorations, and to record everything using the app. It also looks to be targeting an older audience – after managing to captivate a younger teen audience, the app looks to be attempting to capitalise on the creativity of the more mature demographic as well.

YouTube Rewind 2018 is the most disliked video ever!

YouTube Rewind is a video that takes a look back at the year, recreating and celebrating content that defined the platform throughout the year. It is usually met with negativity due to viewers’ favourite YouTubers or certain defining moments being missed out, but this year the negativity was much stronger. Despite YouTube claiming that Rewind is controlled by the viewers, they disagree.

YouTube Rewind 2018 was meant to be a collection of “the videos, music and trends that defined YouTube in 2018,” but that wasn’t the case. As of last week, the video officially took the title of the most disliked video ever, beating Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’, which received just below 10 million dislikes over eight years. YouTube Rewind 2018 surpassed this in less than two weeks.

Viewers felt that this year’s Rewind had many things missing. More notably, PewDiePie and Shane Dawson were not included, and neither was the boxing match between KSI and Logan Paul. Now this may be due to the controversial actions of some of these creators in 2018, but missing out these defining factors was clearly something that fans were not happy about.

Some household names such as Will Smith and Casey Neistat made it into Rewind, but questions were raised about Ninja’s role in the video. He is not known for his YouTube channel and is arguably more popular on Twitch; many viewers think that the review was made to please advertisers and the more advertiser-friendly creators.

Burger King trolled Kanye

Kanye West is well known for his sporadic and controversial tweets that leave many people questioning their meaning and reason. But Burger King has taken advantage of these wild tweets and has gained the most liked branded tweet of all time. The fast food company gained over 1 million likes and more than 270,000 retweets.

All of this started back on November 4^th, when Kanye took to Twitter to share several surprising revelations, including his love for McDonalds. Within hours, Burger King UK grasped the opportunity with both hands, quoting the tweet with the simple line “explains a lot”.

The tweet immediately gained the attention of millions around the world and generated nearly 1.5 million interactions in just a few weeks. The tweet was the work of Burger King UK’s new advertising agency Coolr – a hell of a start if you ask us!

Amazon stands alone as the top Smart Speaker in the UK and US

Smart speakers have become a household staple for many people, and are becoming more and more popular, particularly in the US. The smart speaker market is currently being dominated by the Amazon Echo, with Google’s Home and Apple’s HomePod following quite far behind. A recent study of Journalism’s November Digital News Report showed that 74% of smart speaker owners in the UK and 63% of them in the US said that their main smart speaker device was an Amazon advice.

Google placed second in the report, with 14% of smart speaker owners in the UK and 26% in the US using Google’s product. The report suggested that Amazon’s dominance in the market was due to them being the first company to enter it. This is backed up by reports from Australia where Google was the first to enter the market, where it was able to move ahead of its competitors. Whilst in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, the “absence of competitors” has allowed Google to grow very easily.