Charli D’Amelio hits 100 million TikTok followers

Charli D’Amelio is the first TikTok creator to hit 100 million followers. She’s the first by some distance, too only two other creators have cracked 50 million. On TikTok, that makes her more than twice as big as Will Smith, three times as big as The Rock, four times as big as Selena Gomez, and five times as big as Kylie Jenner and Ariana Grande. It also means she reached 100 million subscribers in record time. On YouTube, it took 14 years before any channel hit 100 million. D’Amelio only started posting to TikTok in May 2019, and the app has only been available (under its current branding, at least) since August 2018. It’s a huge milestone for both her and the app, but it also comes at a time when Charli and her family are increasingly trying to move beyond TikTok. Recent months have seen the launch of a podcast, further expansion into YouTube, the announcement of a book deal, and more.

 

Creators frequently branch out onto other social networks and into more traditional media formats once they’ve found success on one platform. It lets them broaden their reach, talk to fans in more places, and provide some amount of insurance should one platform make a change that hurts their ability to thrive. YouTube creators, for example, have seen algorithm changes come and go that seem to prioritize and later deemphasize certain genres of video. It also, often, has to do with their ability to make money. TikTok has started to offer payouts to creators, but creators have been disappointed with the returns. Creators also don’t widely have the ability to sell merch straight from the app. That means the two main ways TikTok stars can make money are by recording native ads, or leaving the app for opportunities elsewhere. The D’Amelio crew has been quick to build out an ecosystem of media around not just Charli, but the whole family. Dixie, Charli’s sister, released a debut single in June that quickly jumped onto Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart. (To date, the song’s music video has more than 92 million plays on YouTube alone). The sisters have started a podcast together, and both have been experimenting with traditional YouTube formats (“My Slime Review,” “I went surfing with Casey Neistat,” “I Tried These Snacks For The First Time”) to build followings over there as well. Charli is also working on a book due to be released next month. Heidi and Marc, their parents, have started building an audience, too. They each have their own TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, and they feature prominently on the “D’Amelio Family” accounts on those same platforms. Perhaps the biggest sign of their success as a family is that, when Triller signed a deal for Charli to start posting to its platform, it brought the whole family along with her. This time last year, Charli had around 6 million followers on TikTok. In the year since, both she and TikTok have seen a meteoric rise but TikTok has also faced a barrage of political concerns that have put its future in question. It looks like TikTok will ultimately make it through — but if the platform begins to falter, Charli and her family have already secured plenty of other places to go.

Here’s How To Get The Anime Filter On Snapchat

Snapchat’s anime filter was used more than 3 billion times in the first week after it was released, Snap said today, confirming what we already knew: it was a huge hit. The filter, which morphs its subject into an anime character, is just the latest in a line of fun AR lenses from Snapchat that have gone viral and helped drive usage on the platform. During its third quarter, Snapchat had 249 million daily users, up from 238 million last quarter. The company’s revenue was also up to $679 million, a 52 percent increase even as the pandemic chilled ad spending elsewhere.
"“The adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated.”"

There are signs that Snap’s growth is more robust than drive-by filter users. The average number of Snaps created each day is up 25 percent year over year, the company said (though it didn’t say exactly how many that is). Time spent watching shows on Snapchat also grew by 50 percent. Snap called out the success of its AR features, in particular, when highlighting where it saw growth in the longer term. “The adoption of augmented reality is happening faster than we had previously anticipated, and we are working together as a team to execute on the many opportunities in front of us,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in remarks alongside the company’s earnings release for the third quarter of 2020.

Though Snapchat tends to get less attention than other social networks, it’s among the bigger apps out there. Twitter reported having 186 million daily users last quarter, and TikTok reported in August that it had 100 million daily users in the US. (Snapchat has 90 million daily users in all of North America.) It’s still tiny compared to Facebook and its suite of apps, though. Instagram had 500 million daily users when it last provided an updated number in 2018.


How to get the anime filter on Snapchat

Most people will find the filter included at the bottom with all the other Snapchat filters, but some people are still reporting they can’t find the filter. If you haven’t found the filter yet, here’s how to make sure it’s added.

    You’ll first need to download the most up-to-date version of Snapchat if you haven’t already.
    Open up the app and turn the lens toward you like you’re taking a selfie.
    Click on the smiley face filter button to the right of the main button.
    Click on the explore button at the bottom right of filter options.
    Search for Anime Style using the search bar. Make sure the filter’s creator is Snapchat since there are many other anime face filters in the results.
    You can now take a selfie to see how you’d look as an anime character.
    You can also click the Camera Roll option to apply the filter to any photo on your phone.

One little downside to the filter is that it can only “anime” one person’s face at a time. The filter will also only work on your face, not your body.

How to get the anime filter on TikTok

Unfortunately, the anime filter is exclusive to Snapchat, but that hasn’t kept intrepid fans from posting about it on other social media platforms.

You can save any Snapchat videos you take and import them into TikTok to share the filter there.

Tiktok And Twitter Reportedly Have Had Talks About A Deal

Twitter has had preliminary discussions about a “combination” with TikTok, the Wall Street Journal reported, making the social media platform the latest possible suitor for the popular video-sharing app. As the WSJ notes, it’s not clear whether Twitter would pursue a possible acquisition of TikTok, and any such deal would have big obstacles. The biggest challenge to any deal is the Trump administration’s executive order from August 6th, which bars TikTok parent company ByteDance from handling transactions in the US.

The order takes effect within 45 days. The administration considers the Chinese-owned app a potential security threat, despite no evidence indicating ByteDance or TikTok has ever shared Americans’ data with the Chinese government. TikTok has said it plans to challenge the Trump administration’s order. And then there’s Microsoft, the only company so far to publicly acknowledge it was in talks with TikTok owner ByteDance for a possible acquisition. The WSJ says Twitter would be considered a long-shot in a bid for TikTok, with Microsoft the likely front runner in any deal. Twitter is much smaller than Microsoft, and the WSJ’s sources say the social platform could be likely to face less antitrust scrutiny than Microsoft. But Twitter also doesn’t have as much money as the software giant for a possible purchase. Microsoft said in an August 2nd blog post that its CEO Satya Nadella had spoken to President Trump about a possible TikTok acquisition, which would include TikTok operations in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Microsoft said it expected its talks to wrap by September 15th. Any deal with Twitter would involve TikTok’s US operations, according to the WSJ. Twitter declined to comment. A TikTok spokesperson said the company does not comment on market rumors.