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I definitely empathize with your position on this, and you're right that community is the valuable part, hence the focus around active users. What makes TikTok

by alehul 6y ago

I definitely empathize with your position on this, and you're right that community is the valuable part, hence the focus around active users. What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! The stable community is driven in part by their algorithms, which replace Instagram and Facebook's idea of a feed of those you follow. It gives more power to TikTok, in that you won't notice if some members of the community leave, and they can continue showing you content you'll enjoy from millions of other users. To run through the list of companies you mentioned: (1) Snapchat has a solid userbase that's likely to stay with it, and they're worth over $30b. They aren't profitable, but they chose that path when they focused on Spectacles above monetization, and paid engineers more than Google. A $50b valuation wouldn't be unheard of if they had 2x time-on-app as TikTok does. (2) Vine had hundreds of millions of active users when it was shut down by Twitter. (3) Tumblr is unique; they cut their own head off when they started removing content. They were always a niche service, without the mainstream appeal and without the ability to target their users with relevant advertising.

jbob2000 6y ago
> What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! I think monetizing a community that did not start with the expectation of being monetized will be difficult. Reddit is dealing with this right now and it's degrading the site and the community and they still aren't profitable. Youtube has the same issue right now - many creators did not plan to have their channel monetized and are now being shutdown or delisted because their content is thought to be dangerous to the monetization efforts. This is what I mean when I say that TikTok is "easy to uninstall". As soon as a creator feels burned by the monetization efforts, they press and hold and click Delete App and they are gone. There's no contract in place that says "if you quit you must give us 60 days notice or pay a penalty", there's no stickiness but the validation from the community. Monetization puts the company in the middle of the validation the creator gets from the consumer. Creators detect this, feel like they are being cut off from their drug, and bail to find the next "dealer".
starfallg 6y ago
>The stable community is driven in part by their algorithms, which replace Instagram and Facebook's idea of a feed of those you follow. It gives more power to TikTok, in that you won't notice if some members of the community leave, and they can continue showing you content you'll enjoy from millions of other users. The endurance of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter is the precisely because of the connect/subscribe/follow model. Algorithmic content from random creators is not a model for creating an enduring user base. Users will eventually get desensitised to it and leave. There's a limit to how many memes you can consume.
- rvz 6y ago
  > Algorithmic content from random creators is not a model for creating an enduring user base. Users will eventually get desensitised to it and leave. There's a limit to how many memes you can consume. Another thing about these users in this specific demographic always eventually do is they just grow out of it and leave for something else. Or perhaps what was 'hot' in 2020 is now 'not' in 2021. They'll just flock to the next social network rocket ship until either it runs out of fuel or if the liftoff (momentum) is too slow. Which ever event happens, it's the beginning of the death of the social network's growth.
  - marcodave 6y ago
    If the demographic is the 15-25 age range, they will leave as soon as they feel that their aunt and her dog has signed up, therefore making it "not cool" by definition

by alehul 6y ago

jbob2000 6y ago

> What makes TikTok unique beyond growing like wildfire: their monetization strategy will be easier (the social aspect leads to relevant advertising), and their community is more stable! I think monetizing a community that did not start with the expectation of being monetized will be difficult. Reddit is dealing with this right now and it's degrading the site and the community and they still aren't profitable. Youtube has the same issue right now - many creators did not plan to have their channel monetized and are now being shutdown or delisted because their content is thought to be dangerous to the monetization efforts. This is what I mean when I say that TikTok is "easy to uninstall". As soon as a creator feels burned by the monetization efforts, they press and hold and click Delete App and they are gone. There's no contract in place that says "if you quit you must give us 60 days notice or pay a penalty", there's no stickiness but the validation from the community. Monetization puts the company in the middle of the validation the creator gets from the consumer. Creators detect this, feel like they are being cut off from their drug, and bail to find the next "dealer".

starfallg 6y ago

>The stable community is driven in part by their algorithms, which replace Instagram and Facebook's idea of a feed of those you follow. It gives more power to TikTok, in that you won't notice if some members of the community leave, and they can continue showing you content you'll enjoy from millions of other users. The endurance of Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Twitter is the precisely because of the connect/subscribe/follow model. Algorithmic content from random creators is not a model for creating an enduring user base. Users will eventually get desensitised to it and leave. There's a limit to how many memes you can consume.

rvz 6y ago
> Algorithmic content from random creators is not a model for creating an enduring user base. Users will eventually get desensitised to it and leave. There's a limit to how many memes you can consume. Another thing about these users in this specific demographic always eventually do is they just grow out of it and leave for something else. Or perhaps what was 'hot' in 2020 is now 'not' in 2021. They'll just flock to the next social network rocket ship until either it runs out of fuel or if the liftoff (momentum) is too slow. Which ever event happens, it's the beginning of the death of the social network's growth.
- marcodave 6y ago
  If the demographic is the 15-25 age range, they will leave as soon as they feel that their aunt and her dog has signed up, therefore making it "not cool" by definition