Iran fires air defence batteries in provinces as sound of explosions heard near Isfahan
Iran fired air defence batteries early Friday morning after reports of explosions near the city of Isfahan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
Near the Twizzlers and Sour Patch Kids at It'Sugar are random items -- fidget toys, fruit-shaped soft jelly candies -- that earned a spot on the candy store's shelves because they went viral on TikTok.
A flood of videos last year showed people biting into the fruit gummies' plastic casing, squirting artificially-coloured jelly from their mouths. Store staffers urged the company to stock up, and the gummies did so well that It'Sugar decided to make TikTok part of its sales strategy. The chain now has signs with the app's logo in stores, and goods from TikTok make up 5% to 10% of weekly sales.
"That's an insane number," said Chris Lindstedt, the assistant vice president of merchandising at It'Sugar, which has about 100 locations.
TikTok, an app best known for dancing videos with 1 billion users worldwide, has also become a shopping phenomenon. National chains, hoping to get TikTok's mostly young users into its stores, are setting up TikTok sections, reminiscent of "As Seen On TV" stores that sold products hawked on infomercials.
At Barnes & Noble, tables display signs with #BookTok, a book recommendation hashtag on TikTok that has pushed paperbacks up the bestseller list. Amazon has a section of its site it calls "Internet Famous," with lists of products that anyone who has spent time on TikTok would recognize.
The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has gotten more than 5 billion views on TikTok, and the app has made a grab-bag of products a surprise hit: leggings, purses, cleaners, even feta cheese. Videos of a baked feta pasta recipe sent the salty white cheese flying out of supermarket refrigerators earlier this year.
It's hard to crack the code of what becomes the next TikTok sensation. How TikTok decides who gets to see what remains largely a mystery. Companies are often caught off guard and tend to swoop in after their product has taken off, showering creators with free stuff, hiring them to appear in commercials or buying up ads on TikTok.
"It was a little bit of a head scratcher at first," said Jenny Campbell, the chief marketing officer of Kate Spade, remembering when searches for "heart" spiked on Kate Spade's website earlier this year.
The culprit turned out to be a 60-second clip on TikTok posted by 22-year-old Nathalie Covarrubias. She recorded herself in a parked car gushing about a pink heart-shaped purse she'd just bought. Others copied her video, posting TikToks of themselves buying the bag or trying it on with different outfits. The US$300 heart-shaped purse sold out.
"I couldn't believe it because I wasn't trying to advertise the bag," said Covarrubias, a makeup artist from Salinas, California, who wasn't paid to post the video. "I really was so excited and happy about the purse and how unique it was."
Kate Spade sent Covarrubias free items in exchange for posting another TikTok when the bag was back in stores. (That video was marked as an ad.) It turned what was supposed to be a limited Valentine's Day purse into one sold year round in different colours and fabrics, such as faux fur.
TikTok is a powerful purchasing push for Gen Z because the creators seem authentic, as opposed to Instagram, where the goal is to post the most perfect looking selfie, said Hana Ben-Shabat, the founder of Gen Z Planet. Her advisory firm focuses on the generation born between the late 1990s and 2016, a cohort that practically lives on TikTok.
Users trust the recommendations, she said: "This is a real person, telling me a real story."
Instagram, YouTube and other platforms connected people with friends or random funny videos before marketers realized their selling potential. For TikTok, losing the veneer of authenticity as more ads and ways to shop flood the app could be a risk. If ads are "blatant or awkward, it's more of a problem," said Colin Campbell, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of San Diego.
Influencers who get paid to shill for brands are getting better at pitching goods to their followers, telling them that even though they get paid, they're recommending a product they actually like. "They feel like they are our friend, even though they aren't," he said.
Channah Myers, a 21-year-old barista from Goodyear, Arizona, bought a pair of $50 Aerie leggings after seeing several TikTok videos of women saying the cross-banding on the waist gave them a more hourglass-like figure. "It's funny, I shop religiously at Aerie and I had no idea they existed until I saw them on TikTok," Myers said.
After those Aerie leggings went viral on TikTok in 2020, the teen retailer expanded the same design to biker shorts, tennis skirts and bikini bottoms, all of which can be found by searching "TikTok" on Aerie's website. It wouldn't say how many of the leggings sold.
TikTok, along with other tech companies like Snapchat, is gearing up to challenge Facebook as a social-shopping powerhouse. Shopping on social media sites, known as social commerce, is a $37 billion market in the U.S., according to eMarketer, mostly coming from Instagram and its parent company Facebook. By the end of 2025, that number is expected to more than double, to $80 billion.
Last month, TikTok began testing a way for brands to set up shop within the app and send users to checkout on their sites. But TikTok has hinted that more is coming. It may eventually look more like Douyin, TikTok's sister app in China, where products can be bought and sold without leaving the app -- just like you can on Facebook and Instagram.
"Over the past year, we've witnessed a new kind of shopping experience come to life that's been driven by the TikTok community," said TikTok General Manager Sandie Hawkins, who works with brands to get them to buy ads on the app and help them boost sales. "We're excited to continue listening to our community and building solutions that help them discover, engage and purchase the products they love."
That includes The Pink Stuff, a British cleaning product that wasn't available in the U.S. last year. That all changed when videos of people using it to scrub rusty pots and greasy countertops went viral on TikTok, pushing the brand to cross the Atlantic. It launched in the U.S. in January on Amazon, with 1.3 million tubs sold monthly, and is getting calls from major stores wanting to stock it, according to Sal Pesce, president and chief operating officer of the The Pink Stuff U.S.
"I've never seen anything like this," he said.
Iran fired air defence batteries early Friday morning after reports of explosions near the city of Isfahan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
Nearly half of China's major cities are suffering 'moderate to severe' levels of subsidence, putting millions at risk of flooding especially as sea levels rise.
Prince Harry, the son of King Charles III and fifth in line to the British throne, has formally confirmed he is now a U.S. resident.
The judge presiding over the trial of a man accused of fatally running over a Toronto police officer is telling jurors the possible verdicts they may reach based on the evidence in the case.
Health Canada will change its longstanding policy restricting gay and bisexual men from donating to sperm banks in Canada, CTV News has learned. The federal health agency has adopted a revised directive removing the ban on gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, effective May 8.
Colin Jost, who co-anchors Saturday Night Live's 'Weekend Update,' revealed who he thinks is one of the best hosts on the show.
A male columnist has apologized for a cringeworthy moment during former University of Iowa superstar and college basketball's highest scorer Caitlin Clark's first news conference as an Indiana Fever player.
Sophie Kinsella, the best-selling author behind the 'Shopaholic' book series, has revealed that she is receiving treatment for brain cancer.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.
While many people choose to keep their medical appointments private, four longtime friends decided to undergo vasectomies as a group in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.