TikTok’s ecommerce priorities are clear with expansion into Southeast Asia: Parent company ByteDance hopes to turn social media users into social commerce adopters.

TikTok and Instagram were once again the top US social networking apps of 2021, downloaded 94.0 million and 64.0 million times that year, respectively. Snapchat took third place with a 10% jump in downloads, leapfrogging Facebook, whose downloads fell by 11%.

Chinese companies can learn much about metaverse from US counterparts: Heavy tech regulations in the country have slowed tech firm’s ventures into the virtual world.

TikTok was the No. 1 mobile app in the US last year, with 94.0 million downloads, a 6% increase over 2020. Runners-up Instagram and Snapchat reached 64.0 million downloads and 56.0 million downloads, respectively, meaning the three most downloaded apps in the US were all photo- and video-sharing platforms.

China deems personalized recommendations discriminatory and harmful to user well-being: The new law could discourage users from spending time—and money—on retail and social media platforms.

TikTok's success has renewed social platforms' interest in algorithms: Instagram, Snap, YouTube, and Twitter have all begun implementing algorithmically-recommended content over the past year.

AirAsia, one of the world’s largest budget airlines, is on a mission to build a regional super app. While it follows in the footsteps of titans like WeChat in China and Gojek in Southeast Asia, if AirAsia succeeds, it will blaze a path for travel and other industries not endemic to the mobile space.

Every national market in the world will finish this year with more ad spending than in 2020. In most categories, worldwide growth records will be shattered. But 2021 was a very unusual year, following a very unusual 2020.

Is TikTok ready to take on Amazon? ByteDance wants to launch an international ecommerce platform; whether it rolls out as a TikTok integration, or as a standalone app, will be a litmus test for the strength of the US social commerce market.

Singles’ Day, the online shopping festival invented by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and held on November 11, is widely known in the West. Now, a series of similar “double-digit” shopping festivals from digital powerhouses Lazada and Shopee are driving ecommerce growth in Southeast Asia.

China catches up in data privacy: Its new laws give consumers similar levels of data protection in the private sector as the EU's GDPR, which could help streamline data usage guidelines worldwide.

Creator economy crescendo: Amazon is quickly building out areas of its business that center on influencers, as the walls between social media and ecommerce erode and creators' roles in those spaces start to blend together.

China continues to lead the world in all things ecommerce, including innovation. Social commerce livestreaming is just one of many new stories for 2021 and beyond.

China is often seen as the wild west of privacy protection, where unscrupulous companies collect and trade personal data as regulators and consumers stand idly by. The Chinese government has been trying to change that, most recently by drafting a privacy law akin to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). While the implications for businesses are still murky, it’s clear that China is determined to tackle this issue its own way, at its own pace.

In April 2016, WeCom launched as WeChat Work in China, to only moderate success. The pandemic has turbocharged its user growth, however. The app’s integration with WeChat and arsenal of business features will make it a valuable asset for marketers even after offices reopen.

In 2020, China was the only major economy to produce economic growth. It’s not surprising, then, that it was also the only major national market to see an increase in total media ad spending. Girded by this economic strength, China’s digital ad market hardly missed a beat.

The rest of the world is waking up to the potential of shoppable livestreams, but it’s old news to China’s short-form video players and ecommerce platforms. Short-video leaders Douyin (TikTok’s sister app) and Kuaishou (known outside of China as Kwai) have been expanding their social commerce operations, not just to sell products, but to provide services and other forms of content as well.

Already No. 1 in ecommerce, China will overtake the US this year to become the world’s largest overall retail market for the first time.

This report explores our latest forecast for time spent with media in China, and how the coronavirus pandemic will impact our forecast for 2020 and beyond.

The Chinese-owned short-form video app TikTok exploded onto the social media landscape worldwide in 2019, but roadblocks could keep it from rapidly expanding its user base in 2020.