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Article Lead (Deleting just here to provide clarity for peer reviewer):
TikTok (Chinese: 抖音; Dǒuyīn & previously musical.ly) is a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. It is used to create short dance, lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. ByteDance first launched Douyin, an app that is nearly identical to TikTok but is compliant with Chinese censorship restrictions, in September of 2016. Later, TikTok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China. It became available in the United States after merging with musical.ly on August 2, 2018. TikTok allows users to create short music and lip-sync videos of 3 to 15 seconds and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds. The app is popular in Asia, the United States, and other parts of the world. TikTok and Douyin's servers are based in countries where the apps are available.

After merging with musical.ly in August, downloads rose and TikTok became the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018. TikTok was the first Chinese app to achieve this designation. As of 2018, it was available in over 150 markets and in 75 languages. In February 2019, TikTok and Douyin collectively hit one billion downloads globally, excluding Android installs in China. In 2019, TikTok was declared the 7th most downloaded mobile app of the decade. It was also declared the #1 most downloaded app on the App Store in 2018 and 2019.

Evolution
Douyin was launched by ByteDance in China in September 2016. The app was initially called A.me, but rebranded to Douyin in December 2016. Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year it had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day. TikTok was launched in the international market in September 2017. On 23 January 2018, the TikTok app ranked No. 1 among free mobile app downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries.

TikTok has been downloaded about 80 million times in the United States, and 800 million times worldwide, according to data from the mobile research firm Sensor Tower that excludes Android users in China. Many celebrities including Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk began using the application in 2018.

On September 3, 2019, TikTok and the NFL announced a multi-year partnership. The agreement occurred just two days shy of the NFL's 100th season kick off at the Soldier stadium, where TikTok hosted activities for fans in honor of the deal. The partnership entails the launch of an official NFL TikTok account which will bring about new marketing opportunities such as sponsored videos and hashtag challenges.

Musical.ly merger
On 9 November 2017, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, spent up to $1 billion to purchase musical.ly. The app was a startup based in Shanghai with an office in Santa Monica, California. Musical.ly was a social media video platform, officially released in 2014, that allowed users to create short lip-sync and comedy videos. TikTok merged with musical.ly on August 2, 2018 to create a larger video community, with existing accounts and data consolidated into one app, keeping the title TikTok. Through this consolidation, ByteDance was able to garner a larger demographic of young users from the United States. This merger terminated musical.ly and made TikTok a universally accessible app, aside from the platform's ban in China.

Expansion in other markets
As of 2018, TikTok has been made available in over 150 markets, and in 75 languages. TikTok was downloaded more than 104 million times on Apple's App store during the full first half of 2018, according to data provided to CNBC by Sensor Tower. It surpassed Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to become the world's most downloaded iOS app.

Douyin
Douyin is available from the developer's website as a separate app from TikTok. Part of its popularity is attributable to its marketing campaigns and launching several activities with Chinese celebrities to engage their fans' interest. For example, Douyin's marketing campaign for the 2018 Spring Festival Gala alone brought an increase of 70 million daily active users. In February 2018, Douyin launched a partnership with Modern Sky to monetize music.