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> How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps Part of the explanation is that they weren't in Shanghai. The f

> How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps Part of the explanation is that they weren't in Shanghai. The founders both worked full time at US tech companies in California when musical.ly was founded. musical.ly may have been founded while they were temporarily in Shanghai, but the founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture. This is important to the article's thesis. At least part of the early insight into the US market comes from the founders living and working in the US.

wenbin 6y ago
The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience). They raised money to build education product with short videos in it. The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part. Sounds familiar? YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and kept videos. Instagram was initially a checkin app with photos. Then they cut the checkin part and kept photos.
- jehlakj 6y ago
  For a second I thought you were going to mention vine.
  - dilyevsky 6y ago
    With vine twitter went one step further and got rid of video part too
- egypturnash 6y ago
  Flickr: initially an image management/sharing tool for a 2d online game. Cut the game, kept the image sharing. Slack: initially an internal communication tool for another incarnation of the same game. Cut the game, kept the chat. (An incarnation of this game did briefly exist between these two, but only lasted about a year.)
  - strombofulous 6y ago
    What was the game called?
    - aniro 6y ago
      Glitch.
      - MontagFTB 6y ago
        I believe Slack reused some of the game’s graphics on their 404 page.
  - ZeljkoS 6y ago
    Fascinating! For curious, here are more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield#Career
  - njj 6y ago
    https://www.sitepoint.com/slack-story-son-glitch/ https://www.sitepoint.com/slack-story-son-glitch/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dirtyid 6y ago
IMO TikTok's draw is that it's the anthithesis to American / western social media culture. It's algorithmic bias towards mainstream, playful, feel good content is a byproduct of Chinese style censorship. What you see on TikTok reflects content that survives the crucibles of Chinese internet filtering. "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. Of course, politics and toxicity exist all over Chinese internet as well, they just get filtered / harmonized over time or never reach many eyes in the first place. It maybe a bad unitary model for governing cyberspace policy for an entire country, but it's has merits when applied to certain audiences / networks and the west should learn from it even if TikTok gets banned.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- thrownblown 6y ago
  It's curious comparing that to the more profit motived social networks bias towards outrage because that gets engagement and clicks?
- ontifica 6y ago
  This doesn't make any sense, I use tiktok and there's plenty of content I wouldn't expect china or america to endorse. There are lots of videos dedicated to communism, capitalism, uyghur muslims, BLM, etc. It's actually fairly open and this type of content gets noticeably boosted by the algorithm if you express interest in it, and gets a ton of likes too. There is also plenty of happy cat videos as well if that's your thing. Also, ugly people get a lot of attention. I would expect china's social credit system to discredit those who are less attractive, but on tiktok you see less than conventionally attractive creators get a big following. They don't even need to be freak shows, it's just an app that's full of regular people openly talking about regular things. Very much the opposite of what I have heard about the way media works in china.
sangnoir 6y ago
> [...] the founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture...This is important to the article's thesis. This is the opposite of the article's thesis. Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok. The article's thesis is that AI doesn't need to understand the culture when it can understand the person at an individual level. The closing anecdote emphasizes the point: a Chinese startup that has a number 1 news app in India and not a single person in the company can read any of the content in their app (Hindi)?! How is that for not understanding a culture?
- evrydayhustling 6y ago
  As an AI-focused human, I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that ByteDance' AI made the difference here - not because I dispute that AI can pierce cultural boundaries, but because doing so is a purchasable commodity for a scaled social platform. The magic sauce here was getting the flywheel turning to have users invent content templates native to the medium. Ad dollars, as you mention, and some smart decisions about biases (maybe, as another commenter says, the creative positivity that survives CN censorship).
- mgraczyk 6y ago
  Right, I meant that this fact undermines the article's thesis. It's important to consider when evaluating what happened with TikTok. I think the general point is right (culture can be abstracted), but I am skeptical that ML/AI alone would have been sufficient.
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok. Music.ly blew up in 2015 and was in the top app charts for a year before Bytedance bought them. They were at 133 million registered users and 40 million MAU in 2016. What was the wall they hit? https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/Screen-Shot-2017-02-02-at-6.28.02-AM.png https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/si...
glaive123 6y ago
This is misleading. The founders grew up and went to University in China. Working in California for 5 years likely isn't enough for someone to deeply understand US culture. Same goes for anyone living and working in a foreign country for 5 years. There's some things you can never understand.
- babayega2 6y ago
  I wouldn't say you can never . Because I went to Italy and even the first year I started to see the difference between my country/culture and theirs and what business opportunities could benefit one or the other. It's so simple. 5 years is enough especially for someone with an entrepreneurship mindset.
- wtracy 6y ago
  Understanding a culture is not a binary thing. Five years is enough time to understand a lot more than someone who has never set for in the country. Naturally, there's other things that they still wouldn't understand after twenty years. Other companies are failing because they're making mistakes that someone who's been in the US less than a year could recognize. ("Don't use imagery of white and black people facing off to advertise that your product comes in white and black colors.")
- mgraczyk 6y ago
  Yeah I disagree. Many young successful entrepreneurs are in their early 20s and have spent less time than 5 years actually experiencing and understanding the culture they live in. I think having some immersion is necessary, but 5 years is probably plenty.
- beaunative 6y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. I don't understand half of the things my parents do but that doesn't mean I don't understand my culture. Culture is defined by people living in it, not an isolated piece.

wenbin 6y ago

The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience). They raised money to build education product with short videos in it. The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part. Sounds familiar? YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and kept videos. Instagram was initially a checkin app with photos. Then they cut the checkin part and kept photos.

jehlakj 6y ago
For a second I thought you were going to mention vine.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  With vine twitter went one step further and got rid of video part too
egypturnash 6y ago
Flickr: initially an image management/sharing tool for a 2d online game. Cut the game, kept the image sharing. Slack: initially an internal communication tool for another incarnation of the same game. Cut the game, kept the chat. (An incarnation of this game did briefly exist between these two, but only lasted about a year.)
- strombofulous 6y ago
  What was the game called?
  - aniro 6y ago
    Glitch.
    - MontagFTB 6y ago
      I believe Slack reused some of the game’s graphics on their 404 page.
- ZeljkoS 6y ago
  Fascinating! For curious, here are more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Butterfield#Career
- njj 6y ago
  https://www.sitepoint.com/slack-story-son-glitch/ https://www.sitepoint.com/slack-story-son-glitch/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dirtyid 6y ago

IMO TikTok's draw is that it's the anthithesis to American / western social media culture. It's algorithmic bias towards mainstream, playful, feel good content is a byproduct of Chinese style censorship. What you see on TikTok reflects content that survives the crucibles of Chinese internet filtering. "Creative and Joyful" opiate for the masses. This is an often overlooked aspect of Chinese social media / content filtering philosophy that has coalesced over time - block out the bad and divisive while elevating mundane joys. It's how the 50c operates, it floods the airwaves with small happy platitudes and avoids debates because engaging and challenging controversial topics is how toxicity is produced. It's counterproductive to even try. The last thing Chinese social media platforms is designed to do is to start revolutions, encourage radicalization or sectarianism among impressionable audiences, things western social media platforms are dealing with now, and why they were blocked in China in the first place. Of course, politics and toxicity exist all over Chinese internet as well, they just get filtered / harmonized over time or never reach many eyes in the first place. It maybe a bad unitary model for governing cyberspace policy for an entire country, but it's has merits when applied to certain audiences / networks and the west should learn from it even if TikTok gets banned.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thrownblown 6y ago
It's curious comparing that to the more profit motived social networks bias towards outrage because that gets engagement and clicks?
ontifica 6y ago
This doesn't make any sense, I use tiktok and there's plenty of content I wouldn't expect china or america to endorse. There are lots of videos dedicated to communism, capitalism, uyghur muslims, BLM, etc. It's actually fairly open and this type of content gets noticeably boosted by the algorithm if you express interest in it, and gets a ton of likes too. There is also plenty of happy cat videos as well if that's your thing. Also, ugly people get a lot of attention. I would expect china's social credit system to discredit those who are less attractive, but on tiktok you see less than conventionally attractive creators get a big following. They don't even need to be freak shows, it's just an app that's full of regular people openly talking about regular things. Very much the opposite of what I have heard about the way media works in china.

sangnoir 6y ago

> [...] the founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture...This is important to the article's thesis. This is the opposite of the article's thesis. Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok. The article's thesis is that AI doesn't need to understand the culture when it can understand the person at an individual level. The closing anecdote emphasizes the point: a Chinese startup that has a number 1 news app in India and not a single person in the company can read any of the content in their app (Hindi)?! How is that for not understanding a culture?

evrydayhustling 6y ago
As an AI-focused human, I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that ByteDance' AI made the difference here - not because I dispute that AI can pierce cultural boundaries, but because doing so is a purchasable commodity for a scaled social platform. The magic sauce here was getting the flywheel turning to have users invent content templates native to the medium. Ad dollars, as you mention, and some smart decisions about biases (maybe, as another commenter says, the creative positivity that survives CN censorship).
mgraczyk 6y ago
Right, I meant that this fact undermines the article's thesis. It's important to consider when evaluating what happened with TikTok. I think the general point is right (culture can be abstracted), but I am skeptical that ML/AI alone would have been sufficient.
WillPostForFood 6y ago
Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok. Music.ly blew up in 2015 and was in the top app charts for a year before Bytedance bought them. They were at 133 million registered users and 40 million MAU in 2016. What was the wall they hit? https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/Screen-Shot-2017-02-02-at-6.28.02-AM.png https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/si...

glaive123 6y ago

This is misleading. The founders grew up and went to University in China. Working in California for 5 years likely isn't enough for someone to deeply understand US culture. Same goes for anyone living and working in a foreign country for 5 years. There's some things you can never understand.

babayega2 6y ago
I wouldn't say you can never . Because I went to Italy and even the first year I started to see the difference between my country/culture and theirs and what business opportunities could benefit one or the other. It's so simple. 5 years is enough especially for someone with an entrepreneurship mindset.
wtracy 6y ago
Understanding a culture is not a binary thing. Five years is enough time to understand a lot more than someone who has never set for in the country. Naturally, there's other things that they still wouldn't understand after twenty years. Other companies are failing because they're making mistakes that someone who's been in the US less than a year could recognize. ("Don't use imagery of white and black people facing off to advertise that your product comes in white and black colors.")
mgraczyk 6y ago
Yeah I disagree. Many young successful entrepreneurs are in their early 20s and have spent less time than 5 years actually experiencing and understanding the culture they live in. I think having some immersion is necessary, but 5 years is probably plenty.
beaunative 6y ago
This is a false dichotomy. I don't understand half of the things my parents do but that doesn't mean I don't understand my culture. Culture is defined by people living in it, not an isolated piece.