What was the name of the app TikTok merged with in 2018?

TikTok merged with Musical.ly in 2018.

Musical.ly was a short-form video app founded in 2014 by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. It became especially popular among teenagers for lip-syncing, music clips, dance videos, and other brief user-generated performances. The service built a large international audience before TikTok became globally dominant.

ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in November 2017. On August 2, 2018, ByteDance combined Musical.ly with TikTok, keeping the TikTok name for the unified international service. Existing Musical.ly accounts, followers, and much of the user content were transferred into TikTok, making the transition relatively seamless for users.

Instagram Reels and Vine are often mentioned because they are also associated with short-form video, but neither merged with TikTok. Dubsmash was another lip-sync and video platform, acquired by Reddit in 2020. The 2018 Musical.ly merger was important because it gave TikTok an established global community and helped turn it into a worldwide platform.