Harris joins TikTok, another sign of the app's value in reaching young voters

Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is now officially on TikTok.

Ever since President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he would no longer be running for reelection and instead endorsed his vice president for the job, the social media platform has been inundated with memes about coconut trees, Brat summer and other fawning content related to Harris.

On Thursday night, Harris joined the party, launching her own account with a video in which she stated simply that she "thought I would get on here myself."

Within six hours, the eight-second post had been viewed 5.8 million times, and Harris had reeled in more than 1.1 million followers.

Her arrival is the latest sign of the site's growing importance for politicians seeking to reach young, highly online audiences. Although TikTok has fewer people on it in the United States than Facebook does, its demographics tilt far more heavily toward people under 35. More than a third of the 170 million people on TikTok say they use it to keep abreast of politics and political issues, according to a recent survey by Pew Research, a considerably higher share than those on Facebook or Instagram.

Before Biden pulled out of the race, his campaign had made significant investments in social media and particularly TikTok, spending $2 million, for example, to hire a marketing firm specializing in recruiting influencers. Nearly 100 social media influencers were credentialed for this month's Republican National Convention as part of what former President Donald Trump's campaign called a "Creator's Hub" designed to generate buzzy content about Trump's efforts to regain the White House.

But wooing potential voters online is not without its challenges. Biden's campaign did not join TikTok until February, more than nine months after announcing his reelection bid. And almost immediately, he alienated many of the platform's most loyal users with his support of legislation that would ban TikTok unless it was sold.

In March, Harris said that the administration had "national security concerns" about the site but that it had "no intention to ban TikTok." A month later, however, the president signed the bill banning the site unless its parent company, the Chinese-owned ByteDance Ltd, sells the site.

Biden has never opened a personal TikTok account. The campaign's account, called "Biden-Harris HQ," struggled to get much traction, reeling in about 340,000 followers by June 1, when Trump joined the platform himself with a video featuring him and the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White.

As president, Trump took steps to try to ban the site, but in March he reversed his stance, saying that blocking the site would benefit Facebook, which he called "a true Enemy of the People."

In just 15 hours, Trump's first post on TikTok attracted 38 million views and the account netted 2.2 million followers -- more than six times the number of followers of the Biden campaign account at the time. Since then, Trump's account has grown to 9.2 million followers, and his posts have accumulated nearly 500 million views combined.

But Harris' ascendence to the top of the Democratic ticket has clearly breathed enthusiasm into the party's social media game.

This week, the Biden-Harris HQ account changed its name to KamalaHQ, and it now has 1.8 million followers. At the same time, Harris' account on Instagram has ballooned to 17 million followers, and a post praising Biden and seeking donations for her campaign racked up 1.6 million views, a significant number for the site. A post announcing her run on the social media site X, meanwhile, has been viewed 14 million times since it was posted Wednesday night.