TikTok isn t just a place to find the next viral dance craze or ankle-breaking stunts. The social video platform, which has an estimated billion monthly users, has become a hotbed for consumer trends in a number of industries. Viral TikTok videos that drive consumer behavior happen so often that they have instilled special sections in shops, been responsible for product shortages and resurrected classic songs. In fact, the platform recently published a study which claimed 71% of users believe to start with TikTok the largest trend.
Here s a look at some of the industries TikTok regularly influences.
Bestsellers lists are often chock full of the best in new releases. Not surprisingly, the TikTok book influencers also disrupted literary industry norms? Enter BookTok, a huge black hole of recommendations and reviews videos that collectively have amassed more than 21 billion views. It s a corner of the Internet that Barnes and Noble s an 't in place section of its website to the platform s trending books. It s a virtual land ripe with influencers with their own book clubs waiting for you to dive in.
The thing about BookTok, though, is that any book can end up trending at any time, regardless of when it was first published and in the age of supply chain woes it can create a headache for booksellers.
What is your opinion on TikiTok.com? Sometimes a book from five years ago will go viral there and all of a sudden it is on the New York Times bestseller list. If it goes back on the list, you can not get it at all, says Candice Huber, owner of New Orleans Tubby and Coo's Mid-City Bookshop.
Search in TikTok for Starbucks secretmenu and you'll be overwhelmed with drinks that will not be found on any Starbucks menu. The Pooh Bear themed frappuccino was concocted to remind customers of Winnie the Pooh. The WandaVision Refresher, named for the Marvel series which debuted earlier this year. Videos with the hashtag have been viewed more than 205 million times and include curated recipes from employees of the coffee chain.
Why would anyone forget the great whipped coffee of 2020 from TikTok? The simple recipe had consumers racing to the nearest supermarket for instant coffee to change their homebrewing routines. Since the last April, coffeewhip videos have racked up almost 13 million views.
TikTok users seem to have a taste for cheese. A search engine returns many Gouda ideas and links with more than 12.3 billion views in a single search.
Why can't you buy feta cheese in one store? A viral video showing a dish with baked feta cheese tomatoes dubbed over pasta was rapidly dubbed TikTok pasta. Jenni H yrinen, the Finnish food blogger who made the madness, wrote on her blog that viral cheese sales were high in Finland after the Finnish video. According to the New York Times, cheesemongers and suppliers here in the U.S. had reported spikes in demand earlier in 2021, when the recipe hurled through TikTok.
This week, a new cheesy pasta is trending at the platform. Thanks to nikkigillespie users can I learn how to cook Kraft Mac and Cheese with a new twist. Let s hope that doesn t mean we re heading straight for a macaroni shortage.
Yes, leggings. The viral trend was induced by mistake, but not without any explanation. Last November, a pair of leggings from Aerie spread like wildfire across the platform after influencer Hannah Schlenker danced to Justin Bieber s Drummer Boy wearing a blue pair of Real Me highwaisted leggings. Schlenker s video and honesty about how the leggings made her look, led to Aerie developing new similar styles and calling Schlenker a crossover consultant, Yahoo Life reported.
In July, TikTok issued study results detailing how their users interacted with music and bands across the platform. Some interesting stuff came out of the platform s study, including the fact that 75% of its users say they discovered new artists through TikTok and 63% of its users heard new music that they've never heard before.
Sure, the platform frequently contributes to the meteoric rise of new singles from artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Lil Nas XNas X, but also introduces new fans to songbook classics such as Fleetwood Mac Dreams. All it took was a guy called doggieface 208 sipping juice while racing down the road on his skateboard to catapult the track to the top of the charts for the first time since its release in 1977, long before many TikTok users were born.