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I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account.

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage in some way. Instagram, Reddit, Twitter etc all bother you from the very second you load the page with modals and banners bullying you into signing up or getting their mobile app, if they let you see anything at all. [0] https://www.tiktok.com/foryou https://www.tiktok.com/foryou

contriban 5y ago
It’s great to occasionally see success stories from companies that break the mold and can be used as examples a-la-Craigslist. Without them we’re forever stuck with “I know that a signup lightbox on first visit is ugly, but it converts!”
- tyingq 5y ago
  Though, sadly, things like Facebook Marketplace are eating nice sites like craigslist: https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SimilarWeb-screenshot-of-Craigslist-traffic-as-of-2019.png https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Sim...
  - xmprt 5y ago
    I don't know if I'd call craigslist a nice site. I know it checks all the boxes that HN loves but when I'm trying to buy something simple from the site, I'd rather not have to give the seller my email and/or phone number. Last I checked, there was no way to message on the website itself.
    - tylorr 5y ago
      In my experience craigslist has always used a dummy email address between you and the seller. Neither person would see the real email address of the other. Of course, I'd eventually hand over my phone number to make communication easier.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      No, give them what's statistically your real name and a full profile with many of your personal connections detailed on it. Huh?
      - xmprt 5y ago
        Call me crazy but I trust a website that has to operate under rules and regulations (albeit pretty lax rules) more than a random stranger I don't know on the Internet.
  - benbristow 5y ago
    Facebook Marketplace doesn't have a UI that came out of the 90s. No wonder. Also isn't restricted to cities, plays nicely in smaller towns. In the UK we also have Gumtree, which is like Craiglist but with a nicer UI - https://www.gumtree.com/ https://www.gumtree.com/
    - russellendicott 5y ago
      I prefer 90s UIs
zerocrates 5y ago
Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account. For whatever reason though businesses like restaurants and bars will often nominally "have" a wide range of social media accounts, Instagram is often the only one with actual content. I used to be able to reasonably use these but I now seem to get a wall requiring login immediately. It's possibly/probably worse because I'm often doing this in incognito mode, which tends to make everything more aggressively naggy. Twitter seems to be fairly random as to when they'll let you, say, view replies or media or something without requiring login, while Reddit is basically fine on desktop (even better in the "old" mode) and a dystopian nightmare on mobile. Pretty much everything "big" is much much worse on the mobile web, I guess because they figure they stand a pretty good shot at getting you to get The App instead. It sucks.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  I've been using teddit.net because reddit on mobile gas become unusable. Someone here pointed me to it.
  - justaj 5y ago
    > Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 requests with ~24 MB) Yeah, teddit.net does seem to be pretty light on mobile gas.
    - pteraspidomorph 5y ago
      There are a couple of nag banners but reddit.com/.compact still functions as long as you don't want to open hosted multimedia.
      - justaj 5y ago
        Alt link: https://i.reddit.com/ https://i.reddit.com/
  - FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago
draw_down 5y ago
I disagree, it’s fairly restrictive outside of showing you one video if you’re in the browser. You can see the video you were linked to but not comments, other videos that use the same sound, other videos by the same creator etc. It’s a pretty common pattern these days; you can also see IG progressively locking down web features tighter and tighter for example.
- oefrha 5y ago
  Are we even talking about the same site? I opened tiktok.com in a private browser window and was greeted by an infinite scrolling list of videos. I scrolled past maybe a hundred and was never prompted to sign up. Clicking on a creator's name takes me to their profile with all their videos. Clicking on the music link immediately above each video takes me to a www.tiktok.com/music/<name-of-the-song> page with tons of videos using the same music. Only comments are behind a login wall. These might change in the future, but your claims just aren't true at the moment. I'm not sure if there are regional variations. (douyin.com certainly behaves differently, but that's an entirely different product.)
- atatatat 5y ago
  You're on iOS, right?
tayo42 5y ago
Reddit used to be like that. Tiktok is young, it can change.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Very likely after a certain market share.
victor9000 5y ago
The difference seems to be if your company is in growth mode vs squeeze mode. Not to say that you're doing poorly if you're squeezing, you're just trying to extract every ounce of value from users regardless of the long term effects.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Growth mode vs. death mode?
saagarjha 5y ago
I “used” Twitter for several years without an account; it’s actually not all that pushy about it. Old Reddit isn’t either, although new Reddit will make you hate it with a passion.
classified 5y ago
Chinese-style capitalism has always been more refined (at least on the surface) than the blatantly stupid US-style capitalism.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post flamebait or call names in HN comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you more than once before not to post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd appreciate it, because we're trying for something a bit different here.
schmorptron 5y ago
Interesting, I recently downloaded the android app to see if there was anything interesting for me, but there they wouldn't let you past without signing up
- Kiro 5y ago
  That's not true. I use the app without an account.
  - schmorptron 5y ago
    Huh? When I open it it asks me to sign up or sign in and I didn't see a skip option, am I just blind?
    - Kiro 5y ago
      It must be a really recent change in that case. For me the prompt to sign-up only comes up when I click on follow, a live stream or when trying to post a comment.
      - lightroast123 5y ago
        It depends on your region's privacy and compliance regulations
sjg007 5y ago
You probably can identify someone without an account these days. So for some applications you really only need one of you want to post and even then I bet you can get away without one.
intricatedetail 5y ago
Due to EU terreg this will change most likely. Platforms that manually vet users may be exempt from having to have censor office in the EU and 1hr SLA to delete content.
alex_duf 5y ago
Oh it will happen once organic growth slows down and the various teams have KPIs and OKRs to follow. Every company bgoes through these phases. They're still benefiting from their "underdog" status, that won't last
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  That’s the problem with something people build a community around being controlled by a company. That’s why open standards are better than a company. Also small things are often better than big. For example there are some great forums running in PHPBB or similar and lovingly maintained by owners. No bullshit like you get on modern apps making it hard to do what you want because like you say KPIs etc lead to dark patterns.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  Yep, reddit used to allow lurking too.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    why the past tense? can lurk on old.reddit.com just fine
    - Solocomplex 5y ago
      For now...
    - bonestamp2 5y ago
      I should have added "by default", but you're right there is a work around. Eventually old.reddit.com will get in the way of a major infrastructure update and they'll kill it off. It will make a lot of people mad, but it will be such a small percentage of users that they will do it anyway.
bonoboTP 5y ago
I clicked and immediately got a modal saying that TikTok is better in the app and I had to click X to go to the page.
- pilsetnieks 5y ago
  The point is that you could click the X and still get the page. Others don't let you do that anymore.
otoburb 5y ago
>>It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage in some way. This is the typical freemium cost structure amped up because endless video streams for the free (anonymous) tier resulting in higher peak-load operating costs (bandwidth & compute). In exchange, TikTok enjoys higher virality which they hope will translate into higher aggregate (but lower relative percentage) sign-up conversion rates.
ehsankia 5y ago
That definitely plays a role, but I think the much bigger factor is how it lets anyone download & share the video file (at least by default, which most don't change). These days, half of reddit, twitter and discord is just filled with TikTok videos. Even Reels and Shorts are full of TikTok videos, you can tell by the watermark. So much so that Reels had to forcefully derank videos with the TikTok watermark on them. This has helped Tiktok spread and grow very quickly. Hell the very link on this post is from Twitter and has almost 100k retweets...
fragileone 5y ago
I highly recommend using FOSS frontends [1] to access these Instagram/Reddit/Twitter/etc, it's a far better experience being able to browse without all these annoyances. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167924

contriban 5y ago

It’s great to occasionally see success stories from companies that break the mold and can be used as examples a-la-Craigslist. Without them we’re forever stuck with “I know that a signup lightbox on first visit is ugly, but it converts!”

tyingq 5y ago
Though, sadly, things like Facebook Marketplace are eating nice sites like craigslist: https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SimilarWeb-screenshot-of-Craigslist-traffic-as-of-2019.png https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Sim...
- xmprt 5y ago
  I don't know if I'd call craigslist a nice site. I know it checks all the boxes that HN loves but when I'm trying to buy something simple from the site, I'd rather not have to give the seller my email and/or phone number. Last I checked, there was no way to message on the website itself.
  - tylorr 5y ago
    In my experience craigslist has always used a dummy email address between you and the seller. Neither person would see the real email address of the other. Of course, I'd eventually hand over my phone number to make communication easier.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    No, give them what's statistically your real name and a full profile with many of your personal connections detailed on it. Huh?
    - xmprt 5y ago
      Call me crazy but I trust a website that has to operate under rules and regulations (albeit pretty lax rules) more than a random stranger I don't know on the Internet.
- benbristow 5y ago
  Facebook Marketplace doesn't have a UI that came out of the 90s. No wonder. Also isn't restricted to cities, plays nicely in smaller towns. In the UK we also have Gumtree, which is like Craiglist but with a nicer UI - https://www.gumtree.com/ https://www.gumtree.com/
  - russellendicott 5y ago
    I prefer 90s UIs

zerocrates 5y ago

Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account. For whatever reason though businesses like restaurants and bars will often nominally "have" a wide range of social media accounts, Instagram is often the only one with actual content. I used to be able to reasonably use these but I now seem to get a wall requiring login immediately. It's possibly/probably worse because I'm often doing this in incognito mode, which tends to make everything more aggressively naggy. Twitter seems to be fairly random as to when they'll let you, say, view replies or media or something without requiring login, while Reddit is basically fine on desktop (even better in the "old" mode) and a dystopian nightmare on mobile. Pretty much everything "big" is much much worse on the mobile web, I guess because they figure they stand a pretty good shot at getting you to get The App instead. It sucks.

cycomanic 5y ago
I've been using teddit.net because reddit on mobile gas become unusable. Someone here pointed me to it.
- justaj 5y ago
  > Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 requests with ~24 MB) Yeah, teddit.net does seem to be pretty light on mobile gas.
  - pteraspidomorph 5y ago
    There are a couple of nag banners but reddit.com/.compact still functions as long as you don't want to open hosted multimedia.
    - justaj 5y ago
      Alt link: https://i.reddit.com/ https://i.reddit.com/
- FuriouslyAdrift 5y ago

draw_down 5y ago

I disagree, it’s fairly restrictive outside of showing you one video if you’re in the browser. You can see the video you were linked to but not comments, other videos that use the same sound, other videos by the same creator etc. It’s a pretty common pattern these days; you can also see IG progressively locking down web features tighter and tighter for example.

oefrha 5y ago
Are we even talking about the same site? I opened tiktok.com in a private browser window and was greeted by an infinite scrolling list of videos. I scrolled past maybe a hundred and was never prompted to sign up. Clicking on a creator's name takes me to their profile with all their videos. Clicking on the music link immediately above each video takes me to a www.tiktok.com/music/<name-of-the-song> page with tons of videos using the same music. Only comments are behind a login wall. These might change in the future, but your claims just aren't true at the moment. I'm not sure if there are regional variations. (douyin.com certainly behaves differently, but that's an entirely different product.)
atatatat 5y ago
You're on iOS, right?

tayo42 5y ago

Reddit used to be like that. Tiktok is young, it can change.

hutzlibu 5y ago
Very likely after a certain market share.

victor9000 5y ago

The difference seems to be if your company is in growth mode vs squeeze mode. Not to say that you're doing poorly if you're squeezing, you're just trying to extract every ounce of value from users regardless of the long term effects.

quickthrower2 5y ago
Growth mode vs. death mode?

saagarjha 5y ago

I “used” Twitter for several years without an account; it’s actually not all that pushy about it. Old Reddit isn’t either, although new Reddit will make you hate it with a passion.

classified 5y ago

Chinese-style capitalism has always been more refined (at least on the surface) than the blatantly stupid US-style capitalism.

dang 5y ago
Please don't post flamebait or call names in HN comments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: we've had to ask you more than once before not to post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd appreciate it, because we're trying for something a bit different here.

schmorptron 5y ago

Interesting, I recently downloaded the android app to see if there was anything interesting for me, but there they wouldn't let you past without signing up

Kiro 5y ago
That's not true. I use the app without an account.
- schmorptron 5y ago
  Huh? When I open it it asks me to sign up or sign in and I didn't see a skip option, am I just blind?
  - Kiro 5y ago
    It must be a really recent change in that case. For me the prompt to sign-up only comes up when I click on follow, a live stream or when trying to post a comment.
    - lightroast123 5y ago
      It depends on your region's privacy and compliance regulations

sjg007 5y ago

You probably can identify someone without an account these days. So for some applications you really only need one of you want to post and even then I bet you can get away without one.

intricatedetail 5y ago

Due to EU terreg this will change most likely. Platforms that manually vet users may be exempt from having to have censor office in the EU and 1hr SLA to delete content.

alex_duf 5y ago

Oh it will happen once organic growth slows down and the various teams have KPIs and OKRs to follow. Every company bgoes through these phases. They're still benefiting from their "underdog" status, that won't last

quickthrower2 5y ago
That’s the problem with something people build a community around being controlled by a company. That’s why open standards are better than a company. Also small things are often better than big. For example there are some great forums running in PHPBB or similar and lovingly maintained by owners. No bullshit like you get on modern apps making it hard to do what you want because like you say KPIs etc lead to dark patterns.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bonestamp2 5y ago
Yep, reddit used to allow lurking too.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  why the past tense? can lurk on old.reddit.com just fine
  - Solocomplex 5y ago
    For now...
  - bonestamp2 5y ago
    I should have added "by default", but you're right there is a work around. Eventually old.reddit.com will get in the way of a major infrastructure update and they'll kill it off. It will make a lot of people mad, but it will be such a small percentage of users that they will do it anyway.

bonoboTP 5y ago

I clicked and immediately got a modal saying that TikTok is better in the app and I had to click X to go to the page.

pilsetnieks 5y ago
The point is that you could click the X and still get the page. Others don't let you do that anymore.

otoburb 5y ago

>>It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to engage in some way. This is the typical freemium cost structure amped up because endless video streams for the free (anonymous) tier resulting in higher peak-load operating costs (bandwidth & compute). In exchange, TikTok enjoys higher virality which they hope will translate into higher aggregate (but lower relative percentage) sign-up conversion rates.

ehsankia 5y ago

That definitely plays a role, but I think the much bigger factor is how it lets anyone download & share the video file (at least by default, which most don't change). These days, half of reddit, twitter and discord is just filled with TikTok videos. Even Reels and Shorts are full of TikTok videos, you can tell by the watermark. So much so that Reels had to forcefully derank videos with the TikTok watermark on them. This has helped Tiktok spread and grow very quickly. Hell the very link on this post is from Twitter and has almost 100k retweets...

fragileone 5y ago

I highly recommend using FOSS frontends [1] to access these Instagram/Reddit/Twitter/etc, it's a far better experience being able to browse without all these annoyances. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27167924