How long ago was TikTok released?

The video sharing app "TikTok" was released 8 years ago.

However, it didn't become TikTok until September of 2017.

The app was originally released as "A.me" on September 26, 2016. Then, three months later, it was renamed "Douyin".

At the time, Douyin was only available in mainland China.

In September of 2017, the owners of Douyin (ByteDance) released an international version of their app.

They decided to call this international version TikTok.

Two months after the international release, ByteDance purchased the lip-sync app Musical.ly because it had a large American user base.

Following the purchase, they started working on a way to merge the two platforms into one.

On August 2nd, 2018, the two apps were officially merged together. From that point onward, all user accounts and videos started to appear under one app: TikTok.

This question was answered on May 18th, 2022.