- Shortform video app TikTok – which has grown 400 employees in the US – announced on Wednesday it has opened a new LA office.
- TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which is currently seeking a new head for US operations.
- TikTok also revealed that it will open its own content creation studio in the summer.
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TikTok seems to be everywhere right now.
The app, which allows users to share audio and pair it with different videos, has become a place where memes start and grow, and one politician is even betting it can get elected to congress. With the announcement of its LA office, the company shows that it’s planning on sticking around.
It was the second-most downloaded app in the Apple App Store and Google Play store in 2019, surpassed only by Facebook-owned WhatsApp. It has 1.65 billion downloads to date, according to SensorTower.
Check out the photos here.
The five-story office was designed to "embody TikTok's fun and joyful personality."
The company seems to be trying to grow its US presence with a new Culver City office in Los Angeles, where it says it will "continue to scale" its "local operations."
TikTok's past growth in the US has positioned is as a rival to services like Facebook and Instagram, which Facebook owns, and other US tech companies.
The entire office is an open floor plan.
In October, TikTok opened a Palo Alto, California office only minutes away from Facebook's headquarters, in the office that Facebook's messaging app WhatsApp used to occupy. Now it joins Facebook and Google with an LA presence.
It also has what the company described as a "stadium-style presentation and gathering space."
This Culver City office seems to be the next step in TikTok's path to US growth, which TikTok acknowledged in a statement.
"While we are a global company, having a permanent office in LA speaks to our commitment to the US market and deepens our bonds with the city, and the talent and companies, that call it home," the company said.
Decor nods to some of the most popular videos on the app...
...while custom murals add to the youthful, modern aesthetic. The office is even dog-friendly.
TikTok said that it will continue building its LA team, with "key leadership hires across functions like product, content, music, safety, and operations."
While TikTok has nowhere near the number of daily users as Facebook, the app's parent company, ByteDance, is growing quickly. ByteDance has been described as "China's Facebook," and with a valuation of $75 billion, it is the highest valued private company in the world.
The company added that it plans to build a content-creation studio in the office by the summer of 2020, something other platforms like YouTube already offer.
Last month, ByteDance publicly rejected rumors that it was considering selling off its TikTok stake, and now TikTok is seeking a new US-based CEO.