Which came first, Harry Potter or TikTok?

Harry Potter came first, by 19 years. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in the UK.

Side by side

Harry Potter

Bloomsbury published the first book in June 1997 with a print run of 500 copies, most of which went to libraries, after twelve other publishers had rejected the manuscript. The company's chairman gave the first chapter to his eight-year-old daughter, who demanded the rest. It came out the same year as Netflix was founded and a year before Google.

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.