Beijing (PingWest)—TikTok, the hit short video sharing platform, has announced that it will invest £13 million ($15 million) to commission creators and institutions to produce educational content in Europe.

Universities and charities are among those who will be paid to create bespoke content for the social media giant.

Rich Waterworth, TikTok's general manager for Europe, told BBC that the platform had noticed users' interest in educational videos, with more than seven billion views of the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok.

"Going forward, LearnOnTikTok is about us investing in partners and content creators with a breadth of professional content... We think this is about applying the power of TikTok to learning: the effects, the audio, the transitions, the tools that make it so engaging and fun, to make people enjoy learning."

Due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of consumers are killing time and socializing via short video platforms. The app has been downloaded more than 2 billion times from the Apple App Store and Google Play store, analytics firm Sensor Tower reported on April 29. 

ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, has been focusing on the online education market for a while. In May 2018, the company launched its online kid English learning platform GoGoKid where Chinese children are taught English online by foreign teachers. Moreover, before officially launching its K-12 online tutoring platform “Daliketang”, the company has acquired the online education platform Qingbei Online School with 20 million yuan.