How a Chinese social media app secured a foothold in the US

The apps most popular "muser" is a 15-year-old Ariel Martin hails from Florida, has more than 14 million followers.

Musical.ly, the first social media app out of China, has over 100 million users worldwide.

It has attracted celebrities like Ariana Grande and has turned several American teenagers into online stars. Its success as a Chinese app has surprised many experts with some calling it "frankly unique," such as Danielle Levitas, head of research at analytics firm App Annie.

The app's 37-year-old co-founder Alex Zhu, shared how it all started with a train ride next to a group of teens in California.



"Half of them were listening to music with earbuds, and the other half were constantly taking pictures or videos and making fun of each other," he told CNN.  "They love music, videos and social media ... why don't we combine these three things into one product?"

Zhu launched the app in English and Chinese and once the app picked up in the US, Zhu decided to solely focus on that market. Zhu described how American teenagers provided a greater opportunity for social platforms than Chinese teenagers who were preoccupied with the high-pressure education system of China.

"American teenagers have time and creativity, and they share things all the time on social media, in school, and on the school bus," he said.

The apps most popular "muser" is 15-year-old Ariel Martin from Florida, who has over 14 million followers. Martin's musical.ly fame has resulted in the creation of her own branded merchandise -- including lipstick and phone grips.

To all the Arianators of the world!🔥 Make a #SideToSide musical.ly & post on Insta! Ariana herself will choose her ❤️ fave muser to win a pair of tickets to "Dangerous Woman" tour! 😍

A video posted by musical.ly (@musical.ly) on Oct 21, 2016 at 12:19pm PDT

Users spend about three and a half minutes on the app, a lot longer than the two minutes they spend on Instagram, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower. However, musical.ly still lags behind Instagram and Snapchat in terms of active users with Instagram having close to 90 million and Snapchat about 60 million compared to musical.ly’s 20 million.

Musical.ly has constantly added new features to try to keep users hooked. These include an option that lets them post videos longer than the 15-second limit. The company frequently communicates with its users through WeChat to receive feedback.

i'm happy

A video posted by Baby Ariel (@babyariel) on Sep 24, 2016 at 5:04pm PDT

Celebrity musers make money by receiving virtual gifts from fans courtesy China’s huge live-streaming community. But Zhu focuses on the need for securing celebrity endorsements and professionally produced content in order to attract users.

"Once we have bandwidth, we can find a good way to enter," he said.

This article originally appeared on CNN.