Which came first, Netflix or TikTok?
Netflix came first, by 19 years. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.
Side by side
| Netflix | TikTok | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1997 | 2016 |
| Date | 1997-08-29 | — |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company. | ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017. |
Netflix
Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.
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, Netflix or TikTok?
- Netflix, by 19 years — 1997 against 2016.
- When did Netflix start?
- 1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.
- When did TikTok start?
- 2016. ByteDance launched Douyin in China; TikTok followed abroad in 2017.
Related pages
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- Python or TikTok? Python
- Java or Netflix? Java
- Java or TikTok? Java
- JavaScript or Netflix? JavaScript
Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place