---
title: "Which came first, email or TikTok?"
description: "email vs TikTok: email came first, by 45 years — 1971 against 2016. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-tiktok/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, email or TikTok?

**Which came first, email or TikTok?: email**

1971 — 45 years before TikTok

email came first, by 45 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

## Side by side

|  | email | TikTok |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1971 | 2016 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017. |

## email

Messages had been left for other users of the same machine since the mid-1960s. What Tomlinson did in 1971 was send one between two different computers on ARPANET, and pick @ to separate the user from the host because it was the only preposition on the keyboard that could not appear in a name. He did not record the first message and later said it was probably "QWERTYUIOP" or similar. Email is eighteen years older than the Web.

## TikTok

The app launched in China as Douyin in September 2016 and internationally as TikTok in 2017. What made it global was the 2018 acquisition and merger of Musical.ly, a lip-sync app that had launched in 2014 and already had a large Western user base — so part of TikTok is two years older than TikTok. Douyin and TikTok remain separate apps on separate infrastructure.

## Common questions

### Which came first, email or TikTok?

email, by 45 years — 1971 against 2016.

### When did email start?

1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

### When did TikTok start?

2016. ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017.

## Related pages

- [Apple or email?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-email/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or email?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-email/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or TikTok?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-tiktok/)
- [email or Pakistan?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-pakistan/)
- [email or India?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-india/)
- [email or Microsoft?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-microsoft/)
- [email or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-macintosh/)
- [email or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-windows/)
- [email or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [email or Python?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-python/)
- [email or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-java/)
- [email or JavaScript?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-javascript/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)