---
title: "Which came first, Netflix or TikTok?"
description: "Netflix vs TikTok: Netflix came first, by 19 years — 1997 against 2016. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/netflix-vs-tiktok/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Netflix or TikTok?

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

1997 — 19 years before 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.

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## Sources

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