6 ms·

TikTok famous: How the app is turning teenagers into celebrities

60 points by laurex 7y ago

dba7dba 7y ago
How much was vox paid for this pr piece, I wonder? Also I wonder how much bloomberg is paid for posting news related videos using tiktok. It is a new type of marketing I guess.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  Will Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger also post regularly on tiktok. I don't think tiktok needs to do any more marketing. There is a craze among teenagers to get on there
- stevewodil 7y ago
  Tik Tok is incredible at marketing. We've never seen anything quite at this level. Originally they were posting videos all over Reddit but eventually those submissions got blocked. They also paid a bunch of meme channels on YouTube to start posting Tik Tok compilation videos, which reach millions of views.
  - justinzollars 7y ago
    I think its a very large company and the app is solid.
    - dba7dba 7y ago
      I mean facebook is large and their apps/software are solid too.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Do you know anything about the legality of TikTok paying "influencers" to upload copies of user-created content, without TikTok or the influencers paying the users anything (as in the YouTube compilation example)? I would have figured users own the copyright to their content, other than the music in it, and that something like that could be considered copyright infringement if their entire clip is being uploaded and monetized by someone else without any consent or compensation. (TikTok videos are short, so compilations are composed of a large number of full videos, rather than snippets of videos.) I also believe those YouTubers are often making additional money from the compilation videos with sponsorships and affiliate links, in addition to what TikTok pays them. Is it just a matter of TikTok hoping most small-time creators will see it as free publicity and/or figuring they probably don't have any legal knowledge or resources, or even awareness their content is being monetized by others? Or have the users signed away all revenue-earning potential due to the music licensing, or something? If the latter's the case, it seems unfair that random YouTubers can monetize the content a TikTok user created while the user gets nothing from it, and while the user can't even monetize their own content themselves.
    - grenoire 7y ago
      I would not be surprised if the ToS permitted their behaviour. "Any content you give us, we can use freely in- and outside the platform" kind of deal is going to go past people easily. I think we would have seen people chasing Tiktok already if this wasn't the case.
    - stevewodil 7y ago
      TikTok's ToS maintain that they own any content posted to the platform, and this is a standard clause for most social media companies. The TikTok users get exposure, which may or may not be worth it. Cody Ko ran into this last year, video here (relevant portion starts at 4:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdR8cue4eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdR8cue4eE
- BayesStreet 7y ago
  Reminds me of the recent episode of South Park where "journalists" like Vox claim to be for human rights but bend over to get Chinese payouts. Also why does this post say it's 3 hours old when it was posted yesterday? Reminder that: If you check the AndroidManifest.xml of TikTok app you'll see they are tracking persistent device identifiers coupled with phone #. Then if you uninstall TikTok you'll still have a bunch of their files in shared space that other Chinese apps can pick up were you to install them, presumably so they can track you even if you uninstall the app. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21077216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21077216
- zwieback 7y ago
  Putting in so many pictures of Haley proves that popularity sells, whether it's Vox or TikTok.
par 7y ago
TikTok is definitely ushering in the next wave of social. Admittedly I'm old and therefore I am not on it, but I still find a lot of the videos that get re-posted pretty consumable and entertaining.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
spamizbad 7y ago
The fact that this app came out of China and not Silicon Valley, when it was halfway there with Vine before killing it, seriously makes me question the long-term sustainability of social/media apps from SV in the future. The era that gave us Youtube and Facebook is likely coming to a close.
- momokoko 7y ago
  What I feel is more interesting, is that TikTok did it with aggressive traditional Google and Facebook ads. This is directly at odds with the SV playbook for social media apps which relies mostly on viral and network effects boosted by growth hacks built directly into the product.
  - spamizbad 7y ago
    Good point. I never noticed that. Makes sense: lots of those baked-in "growth hacks" can sometimes be a double-edged sword and can be user hostile.
  - hi5eyes 7y ago
    >TikTok did it with aggressive traditional Google and Facebook ads weird everyone my age (20s) and younger know of tiktok through twitter/youtube never new tiktok had ads on fb, weird for them to target boomers
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      FB and boomers? Only makes me reinforce my belief that generation classifications are mostly bullshit.
      - malvosenior 7y ago
        Boomers are the only people I see using FB. Maybe a few millennials who are trapped so deep in social media addiction that they use it to supplement the 23 hours a day they spend on Instagram.
ktln2 7y ago
... and making these "celebrities" kowtow to Chinese censors. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883993/tiktok-censorship-china-bytedance-politics https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883993/tiktok-censorshi...
- deepVoid 7y ago
  Or kowtow to American censors [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/9jjpph/reddit_censorship_is_slowly_killing_the_site/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/9jjpph/re...
shriphani 7y ago
I met a Punjabi gentleman in his 50s watching Tik Tok. Turns out there's a vibrant comedy scene in the Punjabi language on Tik Tok. It is huge in the South Asian community and is attracts a large variety of eyeballs.
- jankyxenon 7y ago
  Can confirm. Source: am Punjabi; wonderful stuff, pretty much the only social media I consume.
zwieback 7y ago
I wonder how sustainable an app that mostly targets preteens and high schoolers is, though. I realize everyone thinks of the next wave of consumers but will they continue using TikTok? It sounds like a big part of the appeal is that each next wave wants something other than what that the older boring people are using.
- dvt 7y ago
  In short, very sustainable[1]. Look at Snap. Growing pains, sure, but it's undeniable that it became a social media staple. [1] Not TikTok though, see my other comment.
dvt 7y ago
TikTok has been aggressively advertising on Snap and Insta for years now. It's very obviously a non-sustainable business model. The whole point of viral growth is that you don't need advertising. I'm sure there's going to be a massively profitable "MySpace for gen-Z or Vine 2.0" coming out soon (does anyone want to build it?), but TikTok ain't it.
- debt 7y ago
  Maybe unsustainable in the traditional sense, but if they can negotiate contracts with the talent on their platform, that may be a different avenue for profitability. I mean look at the success of Lil Nas X. Highly successful TikTok talent.
  - dvt 7y ago
    I'd argue that Lil Nas X had success in spite of TikTok, not because of it. His single was amazing -- just fantastic content all around. 180+ million hits on YouTube doesn't lie. He would've blown up regardless of platform.
    - friendlybus 7y ago
      Music video seems to have a massive increase in view numbers over any other kind of video category. I question how valid the view numbers are! There must be a lot of computers/tv's left on playing music in burger kings or airports.
- segmondy 7y ago
  How is it non-sustainable, it's booting up. It's not like they keep paying for every time their users use it. It's already viral, folks are now talking about it. I keep seeing TikTok videos on twitter posted/retweeted by users not ads. Hell, I installed it and I never did install Snapchat.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
TikTok is fun because it is not political (yet). The few political TikToks I have seen get destroyed in the comments.
- tomashertus 7y ago
  TikTok banned political advertising[1]! Definitely the right move given their targeted audience and shows the company's focus on keeping in that way. 1) https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/03/tiktok-explains-its-ban-on-political-advertising/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/03/tiktok-explains-its-ban-on...
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    Wow that’s very interesting. Thank you for linking that.
ralphc 7y ago
Non-sustainable business model or no, it is _the_ thing right now. I found this snippet interesting from the article "When an elderly woman went missing, these four 'junior detectives' sprang into action and saved the day" "Logan said the group of friends were excited and happy to have found the woman safe. "We had a party in my tree house eating goldfish and watching TikToks to celebrate," said Makenna."
philshem 7y ago
I realized many of my comments are relevant, recent New Yorker articles. So, to stay consistent: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/how-tiktok-holds-our-attention https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/how-tiktok-hol...

60 points by laurex 7y ago

How much was vox paid for this pr piece, I wonder? Also I wonder how much bloomberg is paid for posting news related videos using tiktok. It is a new type of marketing I guess.

ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
Will Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger also post regularly on tiktok. I don't think tiktok needs to do any more marketing. There is a craze among teenagers to get on there
stevewodil 7y ago
Tik Tok is incredible at marketing. We've never seen anything quite at this level. Originally they were posting videos all over Reddit but eventually those submissions got blocked. They also paid a bunch of meme channels on YouTube to start posting Tik Tok compilation videos, which reach millions of views.
- justinzollars 7y ago
  I think its a very large company and the app is solid.
  - dba7dba 7y ago
    I mean facebook is large and their apps/software are solid too.
- meowface 7y ago
  Do you know anything about the legality of TikTok paying "influencers" to upload copies of user-created content, without TikTok or the influencers paying the users anything (as in the YouTube compilation example)? I would have figured users own the copyright to their content, other than the music in it, and that something like that could be considered copyright infringement if their entire clip is being uploaded and monetized by someone else without any consent or compensation. (TikTok videos are short, so compilations are composed of a large number of full videos, rather than snippets of videos.) I also believe those YouTubers are often making additional money from the compilation videos with sponsorships and affiliate links, in addition to what TikTok pays them. Is it just a matter of TikTok hoping most small-time creators will see it as free publicity and/or figuring they probably don't have any legal knowledge or resources, or even awareness their content is being monetized by others? Or have the users signed away all revenue-earning potential due to the music licensing, or something? If the latter's the case, it seems unfair that random YouTubers can monetize the content a TikTok user created while the user gets nothing from it, and while the user can't even monetize their own content themselves.
  - grenoire 7y ago
    I would not be surprised if the ToS permitted their behaviour. "Any content you give us, we can use freely in- and outside the platform" kind of deal is going to go past people easily. I think we would have seen people chasing Tiktok already if this wasn't the case.
  - stevewodil 7y ago
    TikTok's ToS maintain that they own any content posted to the platform, and this is a standard clause for most social media companies. The TikTok users get exposure, which may or may not be worth it. Cody Ko ran into this last year, video here (relevant portion starts at 4:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdR8cue4eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDdR8cue4eE
BayesStreet 7y ago
Reminds me of the recent episode of South Park where "journalists" like Vox claim to be for human rights but bend over to get Chinese payouts. Also why does this post say it's 3 hours old when it was posted yesterday? Reminder that: If you check the AndroidManifest.xml of TikTok app you'll see they are tracking persistent device identifiers coupled with phone #. Then if you uninstall TikTok you'll still have a bunch of their files in shared space that other Chinese apps can pick up were you to install them, presumably so they can track you even if you uninstall the app. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21077216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21077216
zwieback 7y ago
Putting in so many pictures of Haley proves that popularity sells, whether it's Vox or TikTok.

par 7y ago

TikTok is definitely ushering in the next wave of social. Admittedly I'm old and therefore I am not on it, but I still find a lot of the videos that get re-posted pretty consumable and entertaining.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

spamizbad 7y ago

The fact that this app came out of China and not Silicon Valley, when it was halfway there with Vine before killing it, seriously makes me question the long-term sustainability of social/media apps from SV in the future. The era that gave us Youtube and Facebook is likely coming to a close.

momokoko 7y ago
What I feel is more interesting, is that TikTok did it with aggressive traditional Google and Facebook ads. This is directly at odds with the SV playbook for social media apps which relies mostly on viral and network effects boosted by growth hacks built directly into the product.
- spamizbad 7y ago
  Good point. I never noticed that. Makes sense: lots of those baked-in "growth hacks" can sometimes be a double-edged sword and can be user hostile.
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  >TikTok did it with aggressive traditional Google and Facebook ads weird everyone my age (20s) and younger know of tiktok through twitter/youtube never new tiktok had ads on fb, weird for them to target boomers
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    FB and boomers? Only makes me reinforce my belief that generation classifications are mostly bullshit.
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      Boomers are the only people I see using FB. Maybe a few millennials who are trapped so deep in social media addiction that they use it to supplement the 23 hours a day they spend on Instagram.

ktln2 7y ago

... and making these "celebrities" kowtow to Chinese censors. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883993/tiktok-censorship-china-bytedance-politics https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20883993/tiktok-censorshi...

deepVoid 7y ago
Or kowtow to American censors [1][2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/9jjpph/reddit_censorship_is_slowly_killing_the_site/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/9jjpph/re...

shriphani 7y ago

I met a Punjabi gentleman in his 50s watching Tik Tok. Turns out there's a vibrant comedy scene in the Punjabi language on Tik Tok. It is huge in the South Asian community and is attracts a large variety of eyeballs.

jankyxenon 7y ago
Can confirm. Source: am Punjabi; wonderful stuff, pretty much the only social media I consume.

zwieback 7y ago

I wonder how sustainable an app that mostly targets preteens and high schoolers is, though. I realize everyone thinks of the next wave of consumers but will they continue using TikTok? It sounds like a big part of the appeal is that each next wave wants something other than what that the older boring people are using.

dvt 7y ago
In short, very sustainable[1]. Look at Snap. Growing pains, sure, but it's undeniable that it became a social media staple. [1] Not TikTok though, see my other comment.

dvt 7y ago

TikTok has been aggressively advertising on Snap and Insta for years now. It's very obviously a non-sustainable business model. The whole point of viral growth is that you don't need advertising. I'm sure there's going to be a massively profitable "MySpace for gen-Z or Vine 2.0" coming out soon (does anyone want to build it?), but TikTok ain't it.

debt 7y ago
Maybe unsustainable in the traditional sense, but if they can negotiate contracts with the talent on their platform, that may be a different avenue for profitability. I mean look at the success of Lil Nas X. Highly successful TikTok talent.
- dvt 7y ago
  I'd argue that Lil Nas X had success in spite of TikTok, not because of it. His single was amazing -- just fantastic content all around. 180+ million hits on YouTube doesn't lie. He would've blown up regardless of platform.
  - friendlybus 7y ago
    Music video seems to have a massive increase in view numbers over any other kind of video category. I question how valid the view numbers are! There must be a lot of computers/tv's left on playing music in burger kings or airports.
segmondy 7y ago
How is it non-sustainable, it's booting up. It's not like they keep paying for every time their users use it. It's already viral, folks are now talking about it. I keep seeing TikTok videos on twitter posted/retweeted by users not ads. Hell, I installed it and I never did install Snapchat.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

TikTok is fun because it is not political (yet). The few political TikToks I have seen get destroyed in the comments.

tomashertus 7y ago
TikTok banned political advertising[1]! Definitely the right move given their targeted audience and shows the company's focus on keeping in that way. 1) https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/03/tiktok-explains-its-ban-on-political-advertising/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/03/tiktok-explains-its-ban-on...
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  Wow that’s very interesting. Thank you for linking that.

ralphc 7y ago

Non-sustainable business model or no, it is _the_ thing right now. I found this snippet interesting from the article "When an elderly woman went missing, these four 'junior detectives' sprang into action and saved the day" "Logan said the group of friends were excited and happy to have found the woman safe. "We had a party in my tree house eating goldfish and watching TikToks to celebrate," said Makenna."

philshem 7y ago

I realized many of my comments are relevant, recent New Yorker articles. So, to stay consistent: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/how-tiktok-holds-our-attention https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/how-tiktok-hol...