In the latest edition of Press Gazette’s Platform Profile series, we seek to explain why some large news groups remain absent from TikTok. We examine the pros and cons of the platform for publishers and share some tips from the Washington Post’s Jorgenson (video below). What is TikTok? In a couple of years, TikTok has grown from being an unknown entity outside of China into one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. Originally known as Musical.ly, the app was rebranded as TikTok in 2018 after it was acquired by Beijing tech giant ByteDance. In China, the platform is known as Douyin and reportedly has 600m daily active users.