I made an interactive map of the “TikTok mansion” craze

Amid pandemic, hundreds of teens move cross-country to form “content houses”

From the archives: I saw this draft from 2020 that I decided to tighten up and publish. I’ve grown a lot since this, and now focus on web and app development over data visualization.

TikTok content houses have taken over our social media feeds, and the streets of Los Angeles. A “content house” is a well-established strategy in the influencer world to build an engaged audience — essentially, several popular creators will move into a (typically very lavish) mansion to create content with one another. And the strategy must work, because during the summer of 2020, more than 20 such houses were established.

I created an interactive map of these mansions to explore the growing trend, and discovered some pretty interesting pieces of information over the course of my research.

For this map, I specifically focused on content houses that launched since mid-March, when much of the world went into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I mapped the houses, and the hometowns of each of the creators that comprise the houses.

Los Angeles is undoubtedly the hub of this new crop of content houses. Since mid-March, more than 10 mansions have launched here, bringing about 85 creators to LA and surrounding areas.