10 ms·

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies sti

• rollinggoron 6y ago
  Isn't this very similar to Vine, the old video social network? Which Twitter bought and properly crash a burned?
  • actuator 6y ago
    I think Vine was follower based still. I haven't used Tiktok but based on the article it seems like Vine+YouTube feed.
  • mikepurvis 6y ago
    Similar in the "posting short videos" thing, but some of the social features are pretty different from anything that's come before, like the ability to easily make a new lipsync video with the audio from a previous video, and then make all videos sharing an audio trivially searchable. Am not myself a TikTok user, but my partner is, so I've seen a bunch of it second hand.
  • chvid 6y ago
    The point is not media format (short video clips) but the "sorting hat". That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ...
    • gruez 6y ago
      >That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. don't most social networks have the "sorting hat" in the form of algorithmic feeds?
      • chvid 6y ago
        Try downloading it and just play with it for a bit without signing up. Compare that with Instagram.
        • mrkramer 6y ago
          Well on desktop and even on mobile you can't browse Instagram freely without signing up or singing in, it is kinda double edge sword which forces you to join or backs you off.
      • nemothekid 6y ago
        The article goes into this - for people just jumping into the comments: The author states that while western algorithms are based on your follow graph (e.g. Instagram is relatively useless until you follow someone and even then your feed is based on your follower graph, like what people you follow like), TikTok builds this data on video features. This increases TikTok's stickyness because you don't need to do anything other than use the app for it adjust to your tastes. There's no need to "import" your contacts or suggest people you should follow, it just "knows" after you watch a couple videos.
        • catalogia 6y ago
          Youtube has been doing this for years. Clear your cookies then start watching youtube videos. Youtube will immediately begin tuning video suggestions to what you watch, no contact importing or channel subscribing necessary.
          • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
            Spotify too. I'll never forget putting one song into Spotify and having it recap my late 90's listening habits over the course of an evening.
        • esrauch 6y ago
          That sounds just like YouTube and how I presumed Vine worked though? E.g. that the majority of users don't set up any follow graph, and that most content users view is algorithmically-discovered and not like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram where most of the content is based on an explicit graph?
    • Slartie 6y ago
      > Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ... Actually, I don't think that this is as easy as you might think. The article goes into this a bit when saying that short video sequences are well-suited for such an algorithm because they provide a high frequency of "inputs" per time unit, but I think the article falls short of describing the other thing that makes videos particularly suitable (and, by extension, makes the assumption that "the TikTok algorithm" had a great future in many other places too, of which I am a bit more skeptical). This other critical thing is that video sequences in general also allow a huge variety of inputs to be gathered from consumption that text, pictures and audio can’t match. - It is trivial to find out which part of a video a user has seen. This is nearly impossible to do reliably with textual content (assuming you don't have an eye tracker running). - Instead of a still picture, a video provides much more things for the viewer to see. So instead of just knowing that in a picture there's a cat and you thus deduce the user likes cats, it's basically possible to split a video up in slices of which you know where there's a cat, and where there's a dog, and where there's whatever else, so from just that single video you might deduce info about the users' interest in cat/dog/whatever content all at once (depending on which parts a viewer has seen, which parts were skipped, at which point the viewer aborted, or at which point the like button was tapped). - Video mostly also delivers audio, hence everything that you can gather from audio, like whether a user tends to prefer female or male voices, or which music style someone prefers, comes as a bonus when gathering info from video viewing - If your videos' audio features someone speaking some text, you can speech-to-text that content and pump it into the usual machine learning modules, from simple sentiment analysis over trying to determine the topic someone talks about up to full-blown "trying to understand what this person is actually trying to say" and take that as an input for determining a viewers' interests. This is basically text analysis, so it lends itself to textual content as well, and audio too, but not so much to pictures. Video is just really pumping out the maximum of all of these content formats in terms of potentially relevant data points about someones' interests, and it does so at really high frequency, especially if the length of each video is as short as on TikTok and thus the content producers have already performed the daunting work of condensing lots of content into the least number of seconds possible.
      • mistermann 6y ago
    • hardtke 6y ago
      This thread is completely missing the draw of TikTok, at least as it pertains to my teenagers. TikTok makes it fun and compelling to create content. My teenagers will actually go places with their friends to "make TikToks." The reason it is compelling, and this is not true of any other current social network, is that good content will get eyeballs -- the algorithm seems to be "fair" in terms of playing your content to enough people to see if it is any good, at which point it can get widely distributed. Most social networks start out this way, but eventually good user generated content gets drowned out by influencers and commercial interests. It remains to be seen if TikTok can stay this way.
      • prionassembly 6y ago
        Yes. Even the vaunted algorithm is merely an improved way of doing this. I remember when "the long tail" became a slogan. What was meant was that if popularity is a power law, then at every level there's a shorter long tail. The point was to accentuate this, to find the celebrities in each niche and monetize them. The underlying mental model has always been the one from broadcasting. Maybe TikTok comes from China because Communist ideology still influences the Chinese; or because they didn't have a Dick Cavett and a Frank Sinatra, celebrity TV. The ceremonies for the 1980 Moscow Olympics had no celebrities, but a diorama of the dozen Soviet cultures from the Ukraine to Kirghistan. The 1984 Olympics in the US had Lionel Ritchie. But Communists or not, the early promise of the internet was that you could participate, and it doesn't feel you can participate on Twitter.
      • newen 6y ago
        Yep, I’ve come across a couple of times in my for you page videos posted with 0 likes from 0 follower, 0 following accounts. And plenty of low likes and followers accounts. It gives anybody a chance and that makes it engaging.
      • creeble 6y ago
        I wonder how much content there would be if they hadn't licensed music for people to dance / lipsync to. I haven't seen that many TikTok videos, but I haven't seen many that didn't have music in them, and I don't think any of it was original. Licensing music has never been easy, and I don't get how two guys (even from silicon Valley) were able to do it from launch.
    • treis 6y ago
      >I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). I don't really see it. We've seen the TikTok model before in Imgur, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Digg, and probably others. It's mostly memes, funny videos, how-tos, and attractive women. They've hit a sweet spot of editing tools and enforced short format to provide a constant stream of quick entertainment. But I don't see anything earth shattering or ground breaking there.
      • villahousut 6y ago
        In all of the examples you provided there's either no personalization or you have to manually curate your feed. Tiktok and youtube are the only ones where your feed is automatically curate for you.
    • Ericson2314 6y ago
      Did Vine not work that way? I have no idea and the author didn't say either.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • filleduchaos 6y ago
    The difference which actually changes quite a lot is that the maximum video length is much longer (six seconds vs a full minute). This lets people put more effort/content into their videos, allowing for more expressiveness than just memes. At the same time, a minute is short enough that it discourages the sort of rambling you might see on a freeform platform like YouTube. The outcome is a surprising amount of focused, creatively edited videos on a wide range of interests (I'm currently pretty deep in both crochet and recipe TikTok). In my opinion the longer length also allowed audio-based trends (which Vine did introduce a year or so before its demise) to really take off. For all that older people mock TikTok dances, there's something to be said for users actively participating in creative trends instead of simply passively consuming them (and there are much, much worse things a teen could be doing on/for the internet than practicing half a minute of choreography). There is an account I follow that's run by a man who's trying to beat a soda addiction. He's posted a video announcing that he hasn't drunk any fizzy drinks every day for the past fifty-eight days, and he seems to have inspired a lot of people to grab a water instead of a soda at least once. I wish more of my social media experience was like that.
    • mistermann 6y ago
      > I'm currently pretty deep in both crochet and recipe TikTok Anyone know if it is possible on TikTok to temporarily check out different genres, but not have them become a part of your profile? Basically an incognito mode I guess?
      • filleduchaos 6y ago
        You can watch videos on Tiktok without an account. You can't search (on the web, at least - I've never installed the app) but simply visiting e.g. tiktok.com/tag/crochet will let you go through and watch content without limits. I used it for months that way.
    • starfallg 6y ago
      I think the real difference compared to Vine is the amount of money that Bytedance sunk into advertising TikTok in past 2 years. All of the sorting hat stuff is nothing new. Without the follow graph, it doesn't endure.
• rydre 6y ago
  > Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. American's will only wake up when it's too late. Zuck will bribe the government in the meanwhile. Corrupt countries become less competitive over time. America is trending on the path of corruption and it's visible to every outsider now, except for unfortunately American's themselves.
  • TheCraiggers 6y ago
    I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China? Granted, I'm American, and thus biased. I do see corruption in my government, but from what I can tell it's a small drop in the bucket compared to what goes on in China. Although I guess there could be debate on what defines corruption. But I still hear tales of basically needing to openly bribe officials to get contracts through manufacturing.
    • rydre 6y ago
      > I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China? I'm saying that America is relatively in my opinion more corrupt than the America of the past. I'm not comparing it to China, China has a different set of systems. Both systems might work.
    • groby_b 6y ago
      How do you think you get environmental assessments fast tracked? (Except we call it a "political donation" and "lobbying") What do you think happens when a place like ALEC flies politicians on jaunts to get them to accept pre-written legislation? Outside of political applications, what do you think happens when pharma reps take doctors to "conferences" in the Caribbean to get them to use their new meds? On an individual level: What do you think that 'fraternal order of police' donation buys you, and what that car sticker is for? It might be a bit more dressed up than a naked bribe, but it's still a bribe.
    • whoevercares 6y ago
      FWIW, many legal political donation in the west will be considered bribery in China.
• TheCraiggers 6y ago
  > Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. I doubt that is the case here, since one could easily make the case that China has more monopolies and government control than the West. More likely, this has more to do with what makes things go viral. TikTok's rise was very much a viral sensation.
  • starfallg 6y ago
    >TikTok's rise was very much a viral sensation. The main reason being ByteDance had deep pockets to acquire users. The amount of ad spend on user acquisition was unreal at $3m a day through 2018 and 2019. Literally billions were spent on promoting the app. Any half decent social media app would have done well.
• actuator 6y ago
  If we were really seeing the effect of monopolies how would Tiktok hold ground in US. FB could have actively gone after it and not allowed FB authentication or ads of Tiktok on FB. In fact, as mentioned in the article Tiktok grew by leveraging the dominant platforms like FB, Instagram. I would still wait and watch on Tiktok phenomenon. It is a viral thing but has no moat as such and only $0.5 billion in expected revenue for this year. There are enough companies which can move in this space and suffocate it.
  • aqme28 6y ago
    I think OP's point is that the American startup that could have turned into what TikTok is today (Vine) was bought only so it could be shut down.
    • actuator 6y ago
      Vine was acquired pre launch. It was launched and allowed to run for a good amount of time before being shut down. Twitter isn't an example of a well run company considering the alienating things they have done to third party devs but I wouldn't call this an effect of monopoly. Even ByteDance acquired Musical.ly which became Tiktok, they just had a clear idea of what to do with it.
• op03 6y ago
  Next gen because of what? Being more addictive?
  • rvz 6y ago
    The grandparent's comement is the exact same growth lead hype-cycle rhetoric that was said for Snapchat, Vine, Periscope, Yik-Yak and Shots. The hype is from ByteDance's VCs. When they get their massive exit, the hype will deflate and the users will grow out of TikTok and find another rockstar social network. Rinse and repeat.
• jhedwards 6y ago
  Somewhat anecdotal but the Chinese app game in general seems very strong. My wife does video editing on Chinese social media and the variety of apps she has for editing videos and photos is bewildering. She can add in all kinds of animation and video effects, and different apps will provide different editing experience and features. I look in the US apple store for video editing and I just don't see that kind of variety in the free/low-cost tier.
  • elldoubleyew 6y ago
    Because for many young Chinese video editors a cell phone is all they have ever had and all they ever want to use. The wests adoption of the personal computer introduced video editing there, and the companies who make the editing software have mostly kept it there.
    • Cactus2018 6y ago
      Funny that the only tool I've seen is from 'Adobe'. https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-rush/how-to/premiere-rush-fundamentals.html https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-rush/how-to/premiere-rush-f...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sandworm101 6y ago
  >> the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. Less monopolies, more so western culture. Many of TikTok's algorithms would be subject to great scrutiny if run by a western company. YouTube would face riots if it were caught openly supressing or hiding videos of disabled, unattractive, or simply poor people. But such "innovation" is fine for a Chinese company. https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/tiktok-disabled-users-videos-suppressed.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/tiktok-disabled-users-v... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tried-to-filter-out-videos-from-ugly-poor-or-disabled-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/17/tiktok-tr...
  • dilap 6y ago
    I feel like this is overblown, because I see ugly and poor people in tiktok all the time (if doesn't matter if you're ugly or poor -- you can still make compelling content), and I occasionally see disabled people too. Perhaps this is true for the very first content you see, but not true once the algo becomes personalized?
    • sandworm101 6y ago
      It is overblown, and isn't unheard of in the west. Any Hollywood casting call involves a US corporation judging people according to attractiveness, hiring only the most beautiful, but in the realm of social media this has been deemed unacceptable corporate behavior. The split is a purely cultural phenomena.
    • greeniron 6y ago
      the entire TikTok India is filled with content from the lower caste. like, literally if you check out all the viral ones like the cringey indian joker, or the very popular one with the 2 really bad acting siblings, they were all shot in the slums.
  • quicklime 6y ago
    I feel like as of late, when China sees some success that the US does not, there’s a sentiment that they succeeded only because they’re a lesser society. They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom, or TikTok succeeded because Chinese corporations are happy to discriminate against groups that western corporations would obviously protect out of the goodness of their hearts. The Slate article you linked talks about Facebook doing a similar thing, and facing a similar backlash. Is it really that hard to believe that a country of over a billion people, with a mature domestic tech industry and startup scene, would eventually produce something that would compete successfully in the west?
• ganfortran 6y ago
  TikTok isn't social media It is the new TV with infinite channels to switch by Facebook will never be able to match it unless it reinvents itself.
• eddieplan9 6y ago
  I think the article did a really good job highlighting the power of combining a worship-level deference towards algorithm and an incredibly deep pocket. In the West, if you are an upstart, you don't have the latter - who can spend $1B on paid install in a year while seeing uninspiring retention? - and if you are big, then you cannot afford the former given the immense scrutiny from the public and the press. Another interesting factor is that ByteDance has unfettered access to both the Chinese and the Western markets. This makes it attractive to investors who wants to bet on an upstart who can fallback to its mature Chinese business. I personally think TikTok is still unproven outside of China if you look beyond the hype. But I also agree the big US companies are sleeping at the wheel. But if you are printing money like FB, why not?
  • oefrha 6y ago
    > In the West, if you are an upstart, you don't have the latter In the East, or the North, or the South, if you acquired another company for 1B you’re certainly not an upstart. (Unless you still consider Dropbox, Airbnb, etc. upstarts.)
• isoprophlex 6y ago
  Maybe this is too much navel staring but clearly, if the central thesis of the article is true, tiktok owes its success to prioritizing the content over the individuals. An interest graph, not a friend graph. Besides stagnation... Could it be also an effect of "the West" becoming more open to collectivist ideals, where the individual is less important, and it's more about what you follow and not who you follow?
  • thekyle 6y ago
    There are plenty of U.S. social networks where people follow ideas and not people. Reddit is one of the big ones.