Jennifer Lopez is the latest celebrity to hop on TikTok, the short-form video app owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance — more proof of the app’s growing traction, and reflective of media companies’ desire to reach its young-skewing base.
Lopez had a very specific aim: to get fans excited about “World of Dance,” the NBC competition show for which she serves as a judge. Season 3 of “World of Dance” premieres next Tuesday, Feb. 26.
“Hey guys, I want you guys to show me your best dance moves using hashtag #WODChallenge,” Lopez said in her first video posted to TikTok, which she also shared Wednesday on other social platforms.
The reaction has been huge, according to TikTok — with about 110 million views for videos with the #WODChallenge in a little over 24 hours. Lopez’s account on TikTok (@jlo) currently has 2,000 followers.
Other celebs that have taken to TikTok include Cardi B., Amy Schumer, Awkwafina, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, Vanessa Hudgens, Jason Derulo, Rita Ora, Lil Yachty, Halsey, Mashmello, Nick Jonas, Liza Koshy and Tony Hawk.
TikTok doesn’t share numbers on how many active users it has. After ByteDance bought predecessor app Musical.ly, it migrated those users over to the TikTok platform last summer. Currently, TikTok has about 266 million monthly active users worldwide (excluding third-party Android stores in China), per research firm Apptopia. That includes around 40 million MAUs in the U.S.; at one point Musical.ly claimed to have over 100 million active monthly users.
J. Lo’s promotion of “World of Dance” comes after another NBC program tapped TikTok: Jimmy Fallon used the app to launch a new “challenges” segment on “The Tonight Show.” (According to the companies, there’s no business relationship between TikTok and NBCUniversal.)
For now, TikTok remains in pre-revenue mode, although it recently has begun testing out ad formats, per TechCrunch.