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TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app

• jlduan 5y ago
  There are some problems about TikTok, but it just reminds me how fun internet could be.
• joelbondurant 5y ago
  Communist tyranny isn't going to fly. TikTok has 2570% less censorship than USA based tax cattle platforms.
• appleflaxen 5y ago
  Is there any chance for facebook to buy them like they did instagram and whatsapp?
  • BitwiseFool 5y ago
    It's possible but extremely unlikely, being a Chinese company. I'm sure the Chinese Government has no interest in letting Mark Zuckerberg own the platform. And it's certainly not like they need the money from Facebook.
    • appleflaxen 5y ago
      Both of those owners (a chinese company vs facebook) seem terrible for the public interest in the US.
  • mciancia 5y ago
    Bytedance would have to want to sell TikTok first ;) Unlikely IMO, unless there will be drama similar to what trump did a year ago, but even then I would expect that someone else will buy it
  • code_duck 5y ago
    I'm quite sure that Mark Zuckerberg has been pondering that day and night for a couple years now.
  • 310260 5y ago
    That's unlikely to happen. Hence why Instagram created Reels to compete with TikTok.
• ericcholis 5y ago
  Pro TikTok take. It's easier and friendlier to consume. The algorithm is good at tailoring interests. But, it's more like TV than FB.
  • minikites 5y ago
    There are plenty of arguments and issues with the politics and moderation of Facebook, but TikTok is more simple than Facebook, and it appeals at that level in the same way Instagram does.
  • spullara 5y ago
    100% agree. The "for you page" is absolutely the best automatically curated feed I have ever seen.
  • purple_ferret 5y ago
    I don't use it, but it looks so painful to me. I couldn't imagine having to 'stage' my life so frequently for the temporary enjoyment of people I do and don't know.
    • lovegoblin 5y ago
      So...don't post? Every platform has (read: is primarily) lurkers.
      • purple_ferret 5y ago
        Lurking doesn't seem all that appealing to me either. I just checked the tiktok homepage and the top two videos I saw were of a woman failing a sobriety test and a guy scaring a drive-through woman with a blow horn. I realize this isn't the content you might see once your algo is calculated, but it's obviously popular stuff on the platform and it just doesn't seem like very positive content for me.
        • lovegoblin 5y ago
          > it's obviously popular stuff on the platform and it just doesn't seem like very positive content for me. This is true of everything. If I look at the front page of YouTube in a private browser window, it's all bullshit too, obviously. But there's plenty of quality stuff on YouTube that I do like, ya know? The point is that the well is deep and broad enough that there is probably a whole community of people making content you'd like, and TikTok is extraordinarily good at finding that stuff for you sooner rather than later. I watch tons of diorama-building tutorials and recipe videos, for example. And I'm better both at painting and cooking as a result. Look: I'm not a shill, here. I'm not trying to convince you to get into TikTok (I mean? who cares, honestly) but I find a lot of talk about it tends to boil down to "kids these days" dismissiveness. And yeah I don't post anything there - nobody wants to see my grizzled old-ass face.
• endisneigh 5y ago
  Sometimes I wonder what the most downloaded app would be if free apps simply didn't exist. Let's put $1 as the minimum. Would TikTok still be #1? Apparently Minecraft is the #1 downloaded paid app. Would TikTok beat Minecraft? It's kind of fascinating. TikTok's ability to hook you in is truly amazing.
  • hkmurakami 5y ago
    Was WhatsApp $1 to download back in the day, or did users pay after download via some kind of subscription?
    • eruleman 5y ago
      WhatsApp used to cost $1 to download when it was just starting out — this was before Apple added subscriptions to iOS apps.
      • skinnymuch 5y ago
        It didn’t cost a dollar a lot of the time on iOS. Very few people ever paid for Whatsapp.
        • Barrin92 5y ago
          Most people on the planet don't use ios, and in 2016 when whatsapp had, IIRC about 900 million users was about when they cancelled it. It's fair to assume a lot of people paid that dollar.
          • skinnymuch 5y ago
            Why did you assume I wasn’t only talking about iOS in my post when I only brought up iOS? I did not even bring up Android. Regardless, most of you’re reply isn’t true. First, people who talk about iOS maimly charging $1 usually also bring up android charging a dollar after the first free year. Are you only claiming the iOS part? If so. Why ignore the android part? Why would Facebook, one of the most profitable companies, keep charging a dollar for Whatsapp in 2015 and 2016? They didn’t. In reality, almost no one on android or iOS paid for Whatsapp. WhatsApp was regularly free on iOs in between stints of being a dollar. On android, almost no one got charged the dollar that came after the purported free trial period. Why would it be fair to assume a fair amount of people paid for it? The fact that no other app whose success mattered on being viral has successfully followed this strategy would make it fair to assume it did not happen. If tens upon tens of millions were charged for iOS [and android], is there any thing to back this up? to back this up? WhatsApp was cagey with their private company revenue. OTOH anecdotally on forums like this and others, It’s hard to find too many early WhatsApp users who paid for it. All my friends in two friends groups were on WhatsApp pre FB buy out. I only remember myself and one other friend in each friend group paying for it.
• lbarrow 5y ago
  Remember, though, social media giants are monopolists and it's impossible to compete against them.
  • bitlax 5y ago
    You just have to be the Chinese government?
  • bun_at_work 5y ago
    This isn't really small startups competing, though. It's a state sponsored/backed entity with more goals than just disrupting the market.
    • paxys 5y ago
      How is TikTok state sponsored?
    • justapassenger 5y ago
      Unless you say that Chinese government is forcing appstores to fake numbers, then it's not relevant. Products with great market fit can get infinite amount of money from VC and other investors.
    • forgetfulness 5y ago
      You must surely see the parallels between the US Government agencies' interest on even small email providers, the US Government threatening to prohibit TikTok on the grounds of doing the same as several near-monopolies based on US soil do all over the world but in TikTok's case being Chinese, and what you're saying? That the US Govt can just reap without sowing as the Chinese Govt does through state-run banks is just a convenience.
  • sosborn 5y ago
    Every social media entity took its position from an entrenched giant.
  • cthor 5y ago
    The main antitrust complaint against social media giants is that competitors are either acquired or bullied out of the market. The only reason this hasn't happened with TikTok is it's based in China.
• KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
  TikTok is probably the best social media app, the only problem is the terrible search function. It doesn't have the sorting and filters that youtube does, fixing this one thing would make it so much more useful to me...
  • EamonnMR 5y ago
    It's not meant to be useful, it's meant to be engaging.
  • thomasahle 5y ago
    What makes it good other than being addictive? If social media is defined by "sharing ideas with other people" is TikTok even social media? Or is it more like Netflix?
    • reidjs 5y ago
      Tiktoks video editor is by far the best phone based video editor I’ve ever used.
  • RGamma 5y ago
    Modern social media is way beyond searching. The urge to seek out doesn't originate in the user. Content is being fed.
• yuy910616 5y ago
  I'm really curious if China will go after bytedance next in its crackdown. My guess would be no. Alibaba, Tencent, DiDi, Meituan all are either local champions that have no competitive advantage overseas - and thus does not help China's growth. But TikTok actually represents that China might have a competitive advantage in deep learning algos that takes massive amount of data - therefore it would be spare from crackdowns. FB, Google, AWS, and Azue all have a competitive advantage that China don't - English.
  • bnt 5y ago
    Alibaba, Tencent, Didi, all have lots of AI and ML/DS experience
    • yuy910616 5y ago
      None have products that "you can only get it here". They have experience but no product that is competitive, if not protected by government action
  • lalos 5y ago
    Few global powers have their home made social networks spread in other countries, let alone in another global power. There’s a reason why Russia and China don’t let American social networks operate in their countries. They’ll protect TikTok, it’s valuable or will be.
    • kokekolo 5y ago
      Russia does allow American social networks. Facebook and Twitter are alive and kicking in Russia.
  • adventured 5y ago
    > FB, Google, AWS, and Azue all have a competitive advantage that China don't - English. While true, that's the lesser of the competitive advantages. China's companies are locked in a highly restrictive CCP control box, which they're not allowed out of. That box will shrink further, suffocating the companies as it goes. It heavily limits how they can compete, what they can do, how fast they can move, and those restrictions will keep getting worse. This isn't even the middle part of the craziness that we'll see out of the dictatorship in China. Dictatorships always get ferociously psychotic as they age, hyper paranoid, increasingly detached from reality (nobody dares to tell them the truth, fear of reprisal increases drastically, so the ability to govern gets worse with time). The purges will get worse, the controls will get worse. It'll make it far more difficult for China's big tech companies to operate, they'll be increasingly hamstrung. The CCP probably won't need to directly hit ByteDance at this point. They've already restrained the company, it got the message as everybody else has. ByteDance will reaffirm that it understands its place in the scheme of things and comply with Beijing's understood wishes. ByteDance was planning an IPO and cancelled it at the behest of Beijing. The fake cover reason was data security. The real reason is that Xi and the CCP want China's tech giants pulled back home and away from foreign listings (foreign ownership, foreign influence). China ideally wants those listings to be domestic-only in the future. Had ByteDance pressed forward with the IPO, they would have been mauled with a giant fine and investigated (turned over) as Didi was. July 12, Wall Street Journal - "ByteDance Shelved IPO Intentions After Chinese Regulators Warned About Data Security" "The Beijing-based social-media giant, last valued at $180 billion in a funding round in December, had been weighing an initial public offering of all or some of its businesses in the U.S. or Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. But the company’s founder, Zhang Yiming, decided it would be wiser to put the plans on ice in late March, after meetings with cyberspace and securities regulators in which they asked the company to focus on addressing data-security risks and other issues, the people familiar with the matter said." https://www.wsj.com/articles/bytedance-shelvedipo-intentions-after-chinese-regulators-warned-about-data-security-11626078000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bytedance-shelvedipo-intentions...
• EamonnMR 5y ago
  The march away from language continues. Facial expressions may be a rich form of communication but the kinds of ideas you can communicate with them are severely restricted. Literacy was hard won and now it seems like we're letting it go. Then again, maybe I'm just too old to understand.
  • edgyquant 5y ago
    Literacy will always have its place. Short, meme centered, entertainment isn’t one of them I suppose.
    • howaboutnope 5y ago
      Actions, in this case what someone uses their time on and fills their mind with, aren't in a place, they're in place of the other actions one could have taken. And hey, one could say literacy also "had its place" when the church ruled over the illiterate in medieval times, so that itself isn't much of a consolation.
      • Syonyk 5y ago
        Most popular online things exist because the concept of "opportunity cost" (in time, attention, money, whatever) is no longer taught. Apparently it's quite profitable to have endless eyeballs refreshing ads.
  • BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I'm just getting tired of seeing SHOCKED faces everywhere. Clearly, exaggerated faces lead to video views but I'm growing so averse to seeing it.
    • nostromo 5y ago
      That’s YouTube, not TikTok. You don’t even click on videos on TikTok.
      • 5y ago
• mrtksn 5y ago
  I'm a huge fan of TikTok because after years of content stagnation and dullness, the internet is fun again. Especially places like Twitter and Instagram are outrage and depression inducers for me, consumed together it feels like the society is collapsing but everyone is living a perfect life at the same time. The China thing is touchy but I want the west to beat them by being better, not by being dismissive and protectionist. I guess by now everyone has heard of their legendary discovery algorithm so I'm not going there but recently I noticed that some of my favourite creators from the Youtube etc. are on TikTok and their material is much nicer to consume there. Why? I think this is because of the short and fast phased nature of the TikTok content. Instead of publishing 10 to 30 min videos(AFAIK Youtube encourages that, it is also good for the revenue), they put together a short video that shows the gist of the subject. They will also be much more responsive, quickly replying with short videos to the comments. It's a very dynamic place. One exception for me is Nile Red, I love watching his 40 min chemistry videos. Actually, there are a few more YouTubers who's content works best on YouTube but I'm watching far less and I have more spare time now. Maybe the medium is the message still holds? Maybe people are now ready to hear the message of the TikTok?
  • cwkoss 5y ago
    It would be really interesting if TikTok allowed users to make a sequential thread of videos, and added a scroll control to view "next video in sequence". Currently "part 2" videos are very tedious to find, if they could make a way to continue a sequence from the fyp with a simple gesture or button, I think they could seriously challenge longer form videos as well.
    • mrtksn 5y ago
      I haven't created a TikTok video yet, so don't count on me for the details but on some videos I see a link to a playlist. BTW, I skip all multi-part videos unless there is a good reason for being multipart. Most are trying to game the system.
    • Syonyk 5y ago
      > I think they could seriously challenge longer form videos as well. Is this like the Twitter feed readers that take what should be a blog post on an external site and stitch them back into something readable, instead of a blog post in 40 parts? There are plenty of sites that focus on long form videos and it might make sense to put long form videos there, if one wants long form video content.
• standardUser 5y ago
  I figured I would be dragged kicking and screaming into using TikTok. At first it was my youngest friends, then my same-age friends, and now my older family members. Really Uncle Steve? It's fine, I like to be in the know, but I will continue to draw my line at SnapChat.
• Quarrelsome 5y ago
  I'm just continually amazed at how Twitter bought vine and then allowed this to happen.
  • mtrovo 5y ago
    Maybe just the right app at the wrong time? To be honest I think TikTok is 20% short videos and 80% AI, so even if you had vine today it would feel totally off compared to TikTok. If you look at social medias evolution the "Feed" concept was first a cronological list of friends' posts then evolved to mix of ads and random friends post to allow for more engagement + monetization. TikTok just got rid of the concept at all, the feed gauge what you want to see by how you interact with the content. I think this was their biggest differential. It's the difference between showing me just stuff that I really like doesn't matter from whom and showing me some ads while holding the content of my friends hostage.
  • psyc 5y ago
    Seems like a pretty good example of "Ideas are nothing, execution is everything." The for me page, the longer video length, all the particular UI decisions all add up to a big difference in stickiness.
• base698 5y ago
  TikTok is mainlining Instagram. I'm sure whatever malignancy Instagram causes will be an order of magnitude worse after this generation consumes the firehouse of TikTok. I created an account when my wife went to run an errand. After two hours she returned and I was still using it. Immediately deleted. It's flawlessly executed and addictive, but so is fentanyl.
• mftb 5y ago
  I thought fb had moved on from being downloaded, to taking over whole countries, by co-opting their internet access?
• hiddencache 5y ago
  Time suckage... and suddenly, it's 3am...
  • root-z 5y ago
    been there done that. deleted tiktok from my phone and reinstalled multiple times too
• reggieband 5y ago
  I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media. I used to think my dopamine receptors were burned out by the constant barrage of memes I received from reddit, Facebook and Twitter but TikTok proves they can refine that product to make it even more potent. When I visit reddit now it feels behind in the same way Facebook used to feel behind. Facebook's video feature (which they shove into my feed as the third or fourth card during scrolling) is 90% stuff stolen from and that I already saw a few days ago on TikTok. But absent their algorithm it isn't nearly as effective. I often have to remind myself how good TikTok's algorithm is. After using it for just a couple of days I can tell it knows more about me than I am comfortable with, even though I just scroll the FYP (For You Page) without logging into an account. The unbelievably narrow category of content it serves me clearly panders to my personality in a way that almost lets me believe I have a majority opinion. It creates a nearly perfectly personally tailored media bubble. A lot of people from my generation (Gen X) and even from the older Millennial's don't use it, thinking it is just for the kids. That is probably for the best. If you are susceptible to media addiction I suggest never downloading it. TikTok: Not Even Once.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    >I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media. >If you are susceptible to media addiction I suggest never downloading it. These are the two big takeaways I've had from using the app for a day. Everything about it is designed to be a sinkhole, like a modern casino where they're gambling with your attention. I know a lot of people who use Facebook/Instagram/TikTok compulsively, and it ruins them to a degree. I think (or hope, at least) the future is headed towards more personal communique (a-la Discord, Slack, Matrix, etc.)
  • cruano 5y ago
    > I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media. I'd compare it more to something like coffee, somehow every time I leave TikTok I'm happier than I was before. This did not happen with Facebook, Instagram, etc.
    • baby 5y ago
• nonameiguess 5y ago
  Does this really mean much? I hate Facebook as much as anyone and would love to see them fail, but they have four times the daily active users of TikTok. Growth has no choice but to slow when you have less room to grow. Also if you lump Facebook and Facebook Messenger together, it's still more even just in downloads, and they didn't have to split into two apps.
  • stevewodil 5y ago
    >if you lump Facebook and Facebook Messenger together As two separate apps there is a massive overlap in the users that are downloading the Facebook app and the Messenger app for their phone. Combining the total downloads for each and using that total number of downloads is not a good measure of anything.
• Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  And I'd probably use TikTok if the "Oh no" and "Astronaut in the Ocean" weren't used in damn near every video. People overusing the everloving crap out of those two songs has ruined that platform for me.
• firechickenbird 5y ago
  I have Facebook on my phone at least since 2013 and I haven't ever re-downloaded it. I also downloaded tiktok last year. Do the math
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• yarsanich 5y ago
  The only issue I see that it can be quite addictive without proper moderation. From tech perspective I think that it brings something new to social media world and that creates some movement in industry. Look at YouTube “Shorts”.
• jjice 5y ago
  Lots of positivity in this thread, and I don't think that's entirely a bad thing, but I think TikTok is the worst of the social media platforms in terms of addictiveness, based on my peers. As a recent grad, so many of my friends are heavily invested in TikTok and have been since quarantine began, some of them for a bit before. The amount of time they spend there is absurd. Consuming 30 second content for three hours can't be good for concentration, right? It helps add to the 'always online' mindset that has grown more popular with social media and smart phones. Instead of going for a walk, some of my friends would opt to lie in bed and watch TikToks, creating empty, basically non-existent connections with people across the world. Connections with people across the world are awesome, and one of the best things about the internet, but TikTok connections are basically UDP. Most TikTok content I've been shown is shallow, the same way so much social media content is shallow. My having to get to the point immediately, we leave out key details and we want to catch your attention before you scroll away. Of course there is the other end of the spectrum with YouTube where a 2 minute tutorial takes 15 minutes. I try not to use much social media, and honestly, I probably should limit my time on HN more as well. Doom scrolling is a real thing, and TikTok is not immune to that. I've seen plenty of dread inducing content that comes from TikTok as well. TikTok keeps you logged on, as it's supposed it. I just don't think that's a good thing. If you can control and limit your usage to something that's healthy for you, then I don't think there's a problem. For me though, that healthy limit is 0, because I know myself and I have little self control with social media in the past.
  • Dah00n 5y ago
    From what I've seen Tiktok is no worse than Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat. If anything there's less toxicity which in itself makes Tiktok better than the rest. With that said I don't use social media much (like maybe an hour a week? I have neither Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat accounts) and if I had to pick only one it would be Tiktok (even though I don't use it now) except if there were a curated HN page with all the toxicity filtered out (that would be awesome).
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
      It's survival of the fittest. The replacement for Facebook and Instagram must have more frequent dopamine hits and less friction. TikTok is better at delivering those hits and worse for the human.
• pseudolus 5y ago
  For those individuals interested in TikTok, Bloomberg has a six-part podcast series - Foundering: The TikTok Story - available [0]. Well worth a listen and discusses the origin of TikTok as well as some of the controversy that surrounds the app. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/foundering https://www.bloomberg.com/foundering
• silksowed 5y ago
  better content, simple as. if you want a pulse on what youth are thinking, go to tik tok. no poll will capture what you can gauge on this platform
• deleted 5y ago
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• karmasimida 5y ago
  TikTok is not social media and can be used without 'engaging' with anyone, is an incredible useful feature to me.
  • phatfish 5y ago
    I've never used TikTok, but that sounds nice. The "comment" section that has appeared under every piece of content on the internet in the last 10 years is the source of so much wasted effort and conflict it's truly depressing. If TikTok is breaking that pattern then it's a step in the right direction.
    • sltkr 5y ago
      ... he wrote, unironically, in the Hacker News comment section.
      • phatfish 5y ago
        True, however HN is designed for fair civil discussion. It comes down to the goals of the site owner. Do they want to create a community and moderate accordingly. Or is it simply a way to up the time-spent metric through readers having a peek to see how stupid the comments are, or not being able to resist throwing in their own two cents. I'm not suggesting I am any better that the average net user, I said "wasted effort" for a reason.
• mtc010170 5y ago
  I'm not a TikTok user.. or really a fan or user of any social media (and yes I realize I'm on HN).. but I find it silly that people are saying TikTok is somehow "better" for society or peoples' psyches than any of the alternatives. Do you remember when Facebook wasn't considered terrible? Twitter? Reddit? Instagram? Snapchat? This is just the latest one to rise to the top.. following very predictable patterns. It's got something novel (in this case I guess a better algorithm and UX).. an attracts an early community (which largely always seems like the youth rebelling against the current top dog). Then the masses come. Pretty soon.. that original spirit and thing that makes it "better" is taken away by greedy advertisers or "influencers" and the party's basically ruined. And then the next one comes along. So consider me skeptical of TikTok being any fundamentally different. In another 2-3 years, the next social network will emerge and take over the zeitgeist. Rinse. repeat.
  • sorry_outta_gas 5y ago
    Facebook was usually considered pretty terriable especially in the early farmville days
    • mdorazio 5y ago
      I have to disagree pretty strongly with this. The early Farmville days were 2009-2010, at which point Facebook was already fairly mainstream (300M users) and trending toward the garbage content, advertising, and outrage bandwagon. For the first few years when it came out (2005-2008), Facebook was the shit for everyone in the demographic groups currently targeted by TikTok.
  • rvz 5y ago
    Indeed. That is the pattern. This is yet another social network doing the same typical social network things found on other networks with: * Far more invasive tracking * Designed to be addictive as possible. * Manipulation of content - seen and unseen * Feeds are gamed by larger creators * Lots of privacy violations and getting sued for it. Every other social network has all of these properties and TikTok isn't any different. The users here commenting about how great it is like 'TikTok is the best thing to have happened to the Internet' [0] maybe forgot when Facebook was once seen as 'the best thing to have happened to the Internet' Until the larger influencers, companies, large corporations come in and ruin it. When ByteDance eventually IPOs, it will be in the interests of the investors and the big money and not the users who still work for the algorithm even when it is already gamed. Another fast growing social network will take their place. Rinse and Repeat. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28135484
• gnopgnip 5y ago
  What is the advantage of installing the app over using your web browser?
  • ev1 5y ago
    The app collects orders of magnitude more private information, permanent device identifiers, phone numbers as a requirement of service.
  • travoc 5y ago
    You can’t even browse the website anymore unless you download the app or log in.
    • gnopgnip 5y ago
      Is there some feature installing the app gives you over logging in in the browser?
• omot 5y ago
  Finally some real competition to the US domination of social media. Definitely would love to see other countries step up and make unique and interesting social media apps that are relevant globally.
• mtrovo 5y ago
  Are we seeing apex Facebook? I still have a lot of friends that use it daily but it's all for things that don't hold a company with a 1T market cap. Anecdotal data: - Facebook usage from my feed it's just older family members posting cheesy political posts and selling items on marketplace - Instagram became a selling channel for brands, be it with their accounts or with "partnerships" with meme/influencer pages. I see less and less content from friends. SO has a professional account there, she always has the feeling that if she doesn't pay them her posts are rarely seen, even by people that follows her. I'm using it less and less every week. - I still use WhatsApp a lot, and I'm quite scared how they could leverage their ad network with my private communications to improve bottom line - I don't use and don't see the point of downloading Messenger, Threads, Reels, Lasso and any of the other weird knockoff apps they release every few months I remember the last chapter of Chaos Monkey and the author hit a very good point that Facebook bought their extension ticket of relevance two times with Instagram and WhatsApp, since then (if you disconsider Oculus) the company didn't manage to create or acquire their next ticket. Maybe they're going the same route as MySpace? edit: small typos, posted from phone
  • ur-whale 5y ago
    > Are we seeing apex Facebook? One can only wish. Except for the fact that it's being replaced by something worse.
    • Gibbon1 5y ago
      Back around 1990 I had the thought 'every new communications medium turns to sh*t eventually'. I think because it eventually gets dominated by grifters swindling marks of the lowest common denominator. 30 years on and I'm not wrong yet.
  • kirse 5y ago
    Are we seeing apex Facebook? I've been thinking this for years now, but there's really nothing to replace it, it has a huge lock-in, and there's not been an underlying technical shift that enables product re-invention. "Social networking" has obviously been around forever, IMO that core technical landscape shift we've seen for 70+ years that results in product evolution has been increasing network connection speed. Faster connections drive re-invention on just about every layer of the internet. In this case: 300b ---> 14k+ -> 56k --> DSL/Cable > Mobile 3G -> ?? Email --> BBS --> AOL --> MySpace --> Facebook --> ?? My guess is we'll see a true Facebook killer emerge once mmWave 5G hits widespread adoption. Of course FB will have their own products to compete, but talking to many Gen-Z they are not really interested in Facebook and typically use Snapchat/TikTok/etc. Facebook is losing the mindshare game, so we're waiting on the tech to seal the blow. On the devil's advocate side, FB has made some shrewd acquisitions like IG/WhatsApp, and tech itself is increasingly headed towards a "cereal box" mindset where a few core companies make all the products you consume under separate labels. A new competitor would need the guts to avoid an early exit.
• mullingitover 5y ago
  I love to see well deserved success and well deserved decline. Tiktok's experience is making you like people you don't know. Facebook's experience is making you disappointed with people you know.
• soheil 5y ago
  There is a lot of copyrighted music in TikTok clips. I wonder what percentage of their growth is because of that. Do they get away with it because they're a Chinese company or is it because the music industry hasn't wisen up to it yet?
  • unraveller 5y ago
    15 seconds background noise is fair use.
• chansiky 5y ago
  I've never used tiktok, but I do have one question. Does the fact that its in video make it harder for influencers to fake their lives? Or is superficiality still highly prevalent?
  • testmasterflex 5y ago
    Images are easier to manipulate and show less context so it’s definitely less shallow in that sense. TikTok also has a more personal and comedic culture in my experience.
• sarasasa28 5y ago
  TikTok is literally TV. not youtube, tiktok. Youtube failed to be a television replacement, and tiktok succeeded. If you don't see this, you are literally dumb.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    What shows can I watch on TikTok?
    • ur-whale 5y ago
      >What shows can I watch on TikTok? Many people don't watch shows on TV, they just channel hop to avoid ads and numb their brain after a day at work, consuming short stretches of content at a time. In that regard, TikTok is indeed very much like TV.
      • smoldesu 5y ago
        Maybe so, but other platforms (Instagram, Vine, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) pitch themselves as the exact same product.
  • jmfldn 5y ago
    It's "literally" not TV. Pedantry-aside, YouTube clearly fits the bill as the TV replacement.
• MangoCoffee 5y ago
  isn't FB is on decline and young people no longer care to be on it?
• Waterluvian 5y ago
  I’m a 34 year old who just got into Instagram and TikTok. I love it and hate it. I love all the creative and ridiculously funny content I find. But I viscerally cannot stand and get angry over so much attention seeking garbage there is out there too. Just smug unqualified nobodies telling people to “stop it” with a smug meme song regarding health habits or fashion or whatnot. Or “oh no no no no” or “thank you Diane” memes. I dunno. Maybe I’m a summer child discovering something everyone’s already contending with. I know it’s a biased sample but there’s this whole culture of entirely unearned confidence and narcissism. Don’t get me started with all the 20something ”Influencers” humble bragging about their cars and homes. I get angry at night and yet I can’t stop scrolling because there’s always some occasional maniac driving a canoe down a hill into a lake. I’m just yelling at people to get off my lawn aren’t I?
  • rchaud 5y ago
    I'm the same age as you. I remember downloading Snapchat years ago and and thinking "I don't get this, you take pictures and add ugly stickers to it and send it to people?". With TikTok, I've seen some good videos, so I get the appeal. At the same time, no app has turned me off the way TT has. - The Grammarly voiceover is like nails on a chalkboard. - Your feed will always have some fixed % of videos which are nothing but bandwagoning on some contrived trend (usually a dance, but could be style of video too). - Samples of popular songs, autotuned and pitched up to within an inch of its life.
  • MonaroVXR 5y ago
    >Don’t get me started with all the 20something ”Influencers” humble bragging about their cars and homes. Not sure about that, if they have the car, but I only watch one influencer. called Supercarblondie, I am not sure if she has that expensive car, when she gave her lover a sweet Suzuki Jimmy. (I forgot the name of the car, but it's expensive. I must say, I got Instagram too, I have no clue what to do with it. I am too lazy to upload and too lazy to touch the app. It isn't easy to upload pictures from the desktop to Instagram.
  • reggieband 5y ago
    I want to spoil a magnificent movie, the Russian classic Stalker [1]. If you haven't watched the film and want to one day, please stop reading this comment. It is a deep film with many themes but one main theme involves a curious plot device. From the Wikipedia article: "The Zone contains a place called the "Room", said to grant the wishes of anyone who steps inside." The theme of that plot device is that once a group of explorers finally get to the room they refuse to go inside. The "Room" isn't a monkey-paw like device that distorts your wishes and gives you a bad outcome, rather it sees inside your soul and gives you what you truly desire. It raises questions about man's conscious desires compared to his unconscious desires. Do you really want to know what you truly desire, even the desires you hide from yourself? I can't do justice to the film but I think of it often and usually with respect to AI and the unreasonably effective algorithms that drive modern feeds. TikTok is in some ways our first true glimpse into the "Room" of Tarkovsky's Stalker. All this to say: I don't see any of the things you are saying you see on TikTok. Whether you like it or not the algorithm is sending you what you engage with. You have been sorted into the "desires wild canoe ride" TikTok. You are sorted into the "desires smug fashion gatekeepers" TikTok. And if you happen to have read this comment and haven't seen Stalker - it is still worth it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
• underwater 5y ago
  I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker News of all places. TikTok content comes across as completely vapid. It's like the worst possible mashup of bad television and social media. As a company TikTok seems to have zero goals beyond increasing engagement.
  • tablespoon 5y ago
    > I'm baffled by the glowing endorsements of TikTok on Hacker News of all places. Could it be addicts trying to justify their addiction to the world (and themselves)? It sounds like TikTok is even more successful at being addictive than previous social media drugs, maybe it's strong enough to hook people who weren't hooked by its predecessors.
  • trynumber9 5y ago
    TikTok is the latest social media on its ascent. Perhaps they are impressed by its ability to keep the pigs eating. Or maybe they really like short videos. Hard to say.
  • spullara 5y ago
    You have to use it a bit and interact with it to find the content you like. My guess is that people who like it have done this and people that don't haven't yet found their niche.
    • SPBS 5y ago
      I think this might be it. I remember my first interactions with Tik Tok to be full of teens lip-syncing songs while preening on camera. I'm still not a regular user, but now whenever I open the app I actually see people from all walks of life.
  • tootie 5y ago
    Yeah, it isn't really comparable to Facebook or Reddit or Youtube. They really do different things. TikTok seems most optimized for the passive receiver of vapid content use case. You can actually do exactly that with reddit if you browse without logging in and never click a comment thread. The top 1% (and bottom 1%) of interesting TikToks end up on Reddit anyway. Facebook/Insta are explicitly about your life and the lives of your acquaintances. TikTok seems more like competition for Netflix really.
• root-z 5y ago
  FB to me today is mostly a modern phonebook rather than real content platform. TikTok's power lies in how much they encourage creators to develop new and fun contents. Every other social media I tried feels way too static and full of propaganda these days, built only for the famous and powerful. Instagram (not including reels) is nice but the picture format is restrictive and the interface feels less immersive. TikTok has a better interface imo since their videos occupy the entire screen. I think the main challenge for TikTok would be to commercialize without degrading their content, but I doubt other companies could do it better at this point with the same medium. A TikTok challenger would probably need to have a substantial edge on technologies such as VR/AR to beat them.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    > modern phonebook phonebook or phonecall? it seems that people use it as a substitute for calling all their friends once a year.
• hardtke 5y ago
  The question is whether TikTok will continue to be as popular as they start onboarding more advertisers and showing more ads. Most apps tend to get worse when they start attempting to make money. Also, TikTok can't be cheap to operate unless they have somehow convinced all music labels to behave in a way they have never behaved before.
• ur-whale 5y ago
  Funny this crops up today: I was in line just a couple of hours ago behind a 20-ish lady who was using TikTok on her phone, and I got to watch her use it for a good 10mn. This was both frightening and sad. Specifically, the speed at which she was switching from content to content without ever (in the span of 10mn) actually settling on one piece to actually watch it. The longest she stuck to one piece of content was on the order of 10 seconds. Besides the fact that her brain didn't (couldn't possibly) register anything useful out of the whole usage stretch, the only think I could think of after witnessing this was pavlov's dog. TV zapping on steroids. Ugh.
  • mrkramer 5y ago
    The question is how do you fit an ad inside a short video if attention span of the user is 10 sec?
• partiallypro 5y ago
  Tiktok is fun, I have tremendous problems with it being so closely tied to the CCP...but you can't deny that it's a good app/service.
• franczesko 5y ago
  TikTok feels like YouTube in it's very beginning, when it was cool and consisted mostly of "sunny" content.
• fidesomnes 5y ago
  No thanks.
• nonfamous 5y ago
  I think one of the reasons for TikTok’s success is that the content exists outside a timeline. Every tried to figure out when a particular TikTok was posted? It’s very hidden. That means two things: * More content for the algorithm to present. It’s quite happy to reach way back into the past to show you something you’ll like. * No time-sensitive content. This suppresses a lot of the political and outrage-driven content that plagues Twitter and Facebook (and to a lesser extent, YouTube, which does seem to favor recent content) As a result, like others I find TikTok a breath of fresh air on the internet.
  • sdk16420 5y ago
    It also reduces the amount of reposts, on Reddit, Instagram and Twitter it's full of 'forwards from grandma', which can disappoint users. But when users get served the original post by default, reposts will gain less traction, and in addition the original creator is more likely to gain followers from their old popular posts.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• deminature 5y ago
  It's fascinating to see Facebook threatened by a company they can't just acquire to put down their competition. Their response in the form of Reels is consistently much worse at recommending quality content than Tiktok is and generally just comprises re-uploads from Tiktok, which is a bad look (people aren't making their content for Reels first). Tiktok is also addictive in a way that no competing app has managed to capture. I'm still optimistic Facebook can recover based on the quality and abundance of talent they have working on the product, but it's been a year and Tiktok only continues to strengthen their position while Reels doesn't appear to have improved, at least from the customer-facing side. We may be witnessing the early stages of a shift in social media apps that Facebook cannot stop.
  • DLay 5y ago
    I’ve noticed most the re-uploaded content on Reels are from meme accounts and not the actual TikTok user themselves, which leads me to believe its shortcomings are more of a content and cultural issue. Instagram has become way more formal and people’s profiles are carefully curated now. Posting silly trends or going on live on Instagram would be a form of social suicide for many.
• yepthatsreality 5y ago
  A lot of talk about how amazing the app is amazing at drawing people in but the conjecture comes off more that these are users looking to being drawn in. Whatever trick the app pulls, these users want that attraction. Kind of comes off as willful gullibility to me.
  • spideymans 5y ago
    Well... yea. People go on TikTok seeking to be entertained. Is this different than any other entertainment platform?
    • yepthatsreality 5y ago
      Not exactly. I seek out entertainment all the time and yet I’m not surprised that I couldn’t look away. With this app, responses mostly revolve around the novelty of being tricked into binge watching. Not necessarily the enjoyment of said entertainment.
• balozi 5y ago
  A few day ago some kids told me that TikTok is for old people. Not sure what's hip anymore.
• tom7 5y ago
  Isn't facebook shit app preinstalled on all android phones now and hard to remove?
• tintt 5y ago
  Well, Facebook held the crown for way too long, it was bound to happen, but honestly I don’t see TikTok as a Facebook killer. It feels too niche to be popular in the long run.
• jjaammee 5y ago
  Never been a TikTok or Facebook user, although I had installed both apps a while ago and deleted within a day. Maybe I missed something interesting but I'm sure it's trivial and would forget soon. But I'll buy TikTok stock if available since it's likely very profitable like FB.
• dizzystar 5y ago
  I find Facebook fascinating. I started using it later than most, maybe 2 years ago. What stopped me from using it was, everyone I knew that was on it never said anything positive about it. They got upset over deleting "their friends" who they never met. They talked about how annoying the cat videos were. In sum, I sensed they received nothing positive from it. I could never understand how people could get so attached to something they downright hate. Instagram became a uh... a bunch of advertisers advertising to each other. I think 9 out of 10 photos are promotional material. Nothing personal, nothing funny, nothing enlightening. Most all of my friends stopped using it about 1 year ago. I won't get into reasons why, but I think you can add 2 and 2 together. TikTok just feels more genuine. If someone is dancing, what are they trying to sell? Nothing at all. It's amazing how much talent is on that app. It's only a matter of time before the marketers figure it out and destroy that app too.
• giantg2 5y ago
  I don't really get TikTok. I guess I'm just an old fart.
• YeBanKo 5y ago
  Because it does not give a shit about your privacy, equality, inclusion, misinformation.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  TikTok is addictive; while I don't use it I saw reposted TikTok videos in YouTube Shorts, all I can see yea they are fun but they are meaningless engagement.
• OJFord 5y ago
  I am honestly stunned that so many people apparently use both HN & TikTok. What does it offer you? Why isn't it the reserve of teens and younger that I thought it was? (I'm in my twenties, it's not news to me that I'm out of touch with the modal person my age/younger, but I'm not totally obliviously removed by generations or anything, and seemingly it's not just used by people my age/younger anyway.)
  • y2bd 5y ago
    Like 3/4s of my algorithmic feed are music content, so - People talking about music they heard recently and enjoy, and often featuring much smaller/unknown artists than I've ever heard of elsewhere. It is biased towards indie rock and a small spectrum of electronic music though. - Those small artists uploading their music, sometimes with a Tiktok-meme-friendly video accompanying it, or just a recording of them performing it - Artists and producers explaining how they make their music, and offering composition or production tips. Much like Medium blogspam from first-year programmers a lot of this advice is pretty awful, but there is good stuff that manages to poke through. The other fourth is a mix of popular content and a decent assortment of the terminally-online irony-poisoned content creators you see everywhere. You already know if you like that stuff.
  • mrtksn 5y ago
    There are wonderful comedians, musicians, dancers, storytellers, videographers, people with curios jobs, unusual animals, remote locations etc. It’s overwhelming positive and creative. This guy is funny: https://www.tiktok.com/@adrianbliss/video/6957061863112723718?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@adrianbliss/video/695706186311272371... If you don’t think it’s funny, simply swipe up, at some point TikTok will start showing you the right kind of comedians(or maybe no more comedians?). It’s no fuss when you encounter something you don’t like. You don’t need to go to the comments and tell then what’s wrong with them. You don’t like it, you skip it, it’s gone. Eventually you will see mostly stuff you like and TikTok isn’t going to think that all you want to watch is pizza making video just because you liked one pizza making video. It’s strangely good at keeping the exposure diverse.
  • srcreigh 5y ago
    As a Canadian, it did a great job of showing me videos from Indigenous people. There was a recent discovery of mass grave sites at the residential schools in Canada. I was very happy to get to see plenty of videos from native creators - some educational, some memorial, plenty of great funny videos too for good measure. There were some truly beautiful videos. Ex, a mom showed her 11 year old daughter in traditional native dress at her first pow-wow. The mom wasn't allowed to do that when she was a kid. So sad and beautiful. I cried! Where else can I find this content..? Idk! I didn't have to look for it, Tiktok showed it to me. I also think there's filter against toxic content. A lot of the videos I see are educational about social issues, but rarely does it feel like a toxic echo chamber.
• lol1lol 5y ago
  ayooo ayooo ok
• ok123456 5y ago
  Has anyone actually enjoyed using Facebook since 2009? Other than to very occasionally interact with old friends from high school and college, it's all just noise as far as I'm concerned. Everyone is too afraid of making the wrong step in the Real Name panopticon. Nobody under 30 wants to use it. On a good day, it's just a worse version of Craigslist (Marketplace). TikTok at least makes me laugh. It's something to flip through while I do mindless cardio at the gym.
• arminiusreturns 5y ago
  I'm severely dissapointed that so many people on hn are giving tiktok a pass for all the things it is up to just because its cool/entertaining.
• broknbottle 5y ago
  The death of bookface can’t come soon enough
• grawprog 5y ago
  I'm kind of surprised Facebook's downloads are actually so high. 2 out of the last 3 phones I've bought came with facebook pre-installed and it was not removable. My latest phone came with Facebook pre-installed, but it is removable.
• tsunamifury 5y ago
  Tiktok is a crowdsourced video ad creation platform. The stream is a lab that tests videos for their effectiveness before they are later reused as ads for publishers. The end goal is for TikTok to sell well optimized crowdsourced content about your brand as an ad. The users are literally competing to make better ads while they believe they are making content.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Wow. Weird. If it wasn't for Digg linking to TikTok, I'd never see any of its content. Facebook & Insta often result in broken or sign-up links. Maybe that's why.
• bamboozled 5y ago
  I love TikTok because it’s my chance to miss out on social media ! I don’t have an account and if I can hold off from making one…
• user2928337 5y ago
  Can anyone try to find charli damelio number ?
• quaintdev 5y ago
  The comments in this thread are surprisingly long.
  • aero-glide2 5y ago
    Makes me quite suspicious.
• winternett 5y ago
  I think after reading a ton of comments here, the one thing that most people overlook is that each user's experience on social platforms is now completely different because of all of the algorithmic "funnels" they implement. Some people get funneled into depression spirals, some people find great new music, the paths are implemented by companies bent towards profit and engagement, while as a result the people driven by reckless experimentation can be driven to madness, suicide, and even doing harm to others including animals in hopes of being seen. I only use social platforms in small spurts because I noticed most of these short video platforms are wrecking my patience and attention span in real life... They are truly good when search works properly and when each user is in full control of what they want to see and the content is properly categorized and tagged, but that doesn't make them enough money... apparently.
• nrclark 5y ago
  This rating system ignores something fundamental: Facebook is preinstalled on a lot of Android phones, and TikTok is not. It would be much better if we could see metrics on which app is _used_ more, not which is downloaded more.
• che_shirecat 5y ago
  This is a great writeup of some of the story behind the Tiktok algorithm - https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorting-hat https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/8/3/tiktok-and-the-sorti...
• rcconf 5y ago
  TikTok is great because it values good content above else. Every other social media platform tends to value followers and popularity over content to reach people. Facebook: Number of friends Instagram: Number of followers Twitter: Number of followers Snapchat: Number of friends YouTube: Unsure exactly, but hard to go viral TikTok: Value of your content Consistently on TikTok you see very popular users with millions of followers only get a few thousand views. That’s the best part of TikTok. You make good content, and the platform puts you to the top. Your popularity does not matter. Everyone gets a fair chance. It’s absolutely fantastic.
  • rc_mob 5y ago
    my video got 4 views :( i did bad
  • chansiky 5y ago
    In a dystopian world, where algorithms judge everyone by some arbitrary metric, you get to decide which algorithm will choose your fate. Which one will it be?
• 1270018080 5y ago
  TikTok is a phenomenal app technologically and design-wise. But it does seem like the ultimate "social media as a drug." I'm not zoomer enough to enjoy it either. But the app itself is very good.
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  I don't know. Every time I try TikTok, I just get teenagers "sexy" dancing to whatever is the popular TikTok song of the week. Now I understand why someone might find sexy teenagers interesting, but I find it quite boring and mind-numbing.
• wayeq 5y ago
  Maybe partly because everyone who wants the facebook app already has the facebook app.
• workinghard 5y ago
  It baffles me watching people acting like clowns for a few views/bucks
• hoangdo2102 5y ago
  Facebook can not acquire TikTok like Instagram... and Instagram is copying Tiktok. TikTok could be using Facial Emotion Detector to improve their Recommendation System.
• jinguang 5y ago
  一个中国的软件竟然引发这么大的讨论，有趣。美国的朋友们，我告诉你们，中国内的抖音上流量播主粉丝量都是亿，千万级别。其视频播放量也都是上亿级别。相比国外的TikTok的用户量太少了，在国内简直不值一提。能想象一条一分钟的视频播放被几亿次播放的感受吗？非常棒的。所以你们在讨论什么？
• niggerdude 5y ago
  Pathetic retards: "Ohohhh me like TikTok! Me like good content, like watch content, consume content. Me want consume many many content, watch video, smile, laugh. Teehee me like laugh like have fun." Stupid fuck. Kill yourself.
• niggerdude 5y ago
  Soulless, bug person right here.
• outside1234 5y ago
  Great - so not only are people giving their privacy away but they are sending their data to China
• planb 5y ago
  Here in Germany, I have not seen much quality content on TikTok yet. Every time people praise the service like in these comments, I give it another try. I start the app and see unfunny scripted jokes, barely dressed girls singing and today even covid denial. I try to swipe it away as quickly as possible, but the algorithm doesn't seem to adjust. Yes, there are some funny or interesting clips in between, but what exactly is the content that keeps you in the app?
• hoseja 5y ago
  This thread feels very astroturfed by people who use terms like "neurodivergent".
  • kelljust 5y ago
    I've seen that popping up a LOT recently, even colloquially. Going through dating profiles, I've seen a number of people describe themselves as "neurodivergent". If everyone is neurodivergent, nobody is.
• komali2 5y ago
  ByteDance is an unethical company that bows to pressure from the CCP to remove content from TikTok about the genocide against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang [1]. Therefore, it's unethical to give time / attention / money to ByteDance. [1] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/video-07282020180119.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/video-07282020180119...
• graderjs 5y ago
  I always wondered if Zuck lurks here and shitposts like he did back in the day, enjoying stirring the pot.
• billpg 5y ago
  There are two types of video. Ones recorded in landscape and ones recorded badly.
• graderjs 5y ago
  Wow I love the HN dynamic on this thread: [Grand-comment: TikTok is legendary and beautiful. The world unites!] [Parent-comment: OMG YUCK TikTok is the WORST because they are Nazis who are actively harming my favorite oppressed protected minority] [Comment: And not only that, but China will ruin us all!] [Very grey comment: Actually there's some nuance here and the thing you say is wrong, is in fact the very thing that draws people together in shared psyche groups] HN: where popular positivity is met with unremitting cynicism, fear-mongering and hatred. The Principle of Spree Speech: Not only do I disagree with you, but I disagree with you in the most horrible and vehement way possible. I render all your points null and bad because they emanate from a poisonous corruption that had the sheer nerve to look sideways at My Truth. All who gaze upon me, shall tremble, and they shall know my name is the Righteous One. Guffbert's Law of Internets: The extent to which one can express hatred, is also both the extent to which the one is right, and all other's are wrong. Pandybergh's Law of Speech Forums: When the internet reflects a reality that is more pleasant than the one known to the speaker, the speaker must punish that reality and prove that the world is in fact as hateful as the speaker has known it to be. Corollary: While simultaneously broadening the perspective of all participants, the internet mostly only succeeded in reinforcing people's already limited perspectives. The parable of the mustard beard: Do not go mellowly into that good forum, wag, wag your finger of blame and clench your jaws of hatred at all the nice things in the world from your rocking chair, grumpy old person with no name.
• marvoronc345 5y ago
  https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/1259088247/c1706348d095adb1f528d3673183a0cc/fanfiki_pro_parnya_i_devushku_poshlye.pdf https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/1259088247/c17...
• bongoman37 5y ago
  It is also impressive that this is achieved despite TikTok being banned in India which takes a particularly large market offline for them.
• MrDresden 5y ago
  I am genuinely happy for those who feel they have found a place online that has less doom, gloom and hatred then other corners of the internet. For my part though, I am aware (and concerned) of the potential for social networks to use their troves of data for ML/NN training (see the Cambridge Analytica scandal). What could the largest social video platform in the world with strong ties to a totalitarian regime do with their data, if they so wished? Call me a cynic, but I do not believe that the potential for misuse will be left untouched. The allure of it is simply too strong.
• bamboozled 5y ago
  The neon dragon is rising!
• LightG 5y ago
  I had tiktok for a few months but uninstalled due to its addictiveness. And any videos of real worth seems to get shared on other platforms anyway so I have no need for the app! Aside: #deleteFacebook on principle. Hot garbage.
• yhoneycomb 5y ago
  Idk why I come to this website. Constant hate against anything Chinese. It disgusts me that people are so xenophobic. Cue the comments saying “it’s the CCP blah blah” Whatever. Literally every comment is always China bad. It’s so transparent.
• beezischillin 5y ago
  Every time I see stories about TikTok’s success I keep thinking of Vine’s failure and whether or not it would be in the same position by now if it survived?
• igammarays 5y ago
  The interesting thing here is the rate of change in the social media space. Facebook took about 10 years to gain the global reach that it did, and TikTok only took about 3 years. The next winner may come and go within the span of a year.
• ElectricMind 5y ago
  Good for them. Good for people. For me, I read books and get better everyday. Kudos to people wasting/engaging to such apps. Keep it up !
• helharpr 5y ago
  It's not a surprise at all. There are a lot of people who are downloading the Tiktok app as they find it entertaining. You can learn a lot of things in TikTok, and at the same time, it serves as a social media. Want to find more about a certain niche? Worry not; there's a lot on TikTok.
• say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
  The label of obnoxious behavior on TikTok is way too high for anything but light use. Heavy users of TikTok are definitely being negatively affected by it.
• RGamma 5y ago
  Why is it getting worse? It is always getting worse.
• lawrenceyan 5y ago
  YouTube Shorts as a copycat service has been quite interesting to see develop. I think it works well alongside existing long-form content, sort of as an alternating filler to take a break with after watching a few longer videos. It wouldn't surprise me if in the past, people went to TikTok/Instagram instead to fill that gap, which now is potentially being fulfilled by Shorts. Curious to see how metrics change over time with the rollout and if it has any impact on TikTok / other general short-form video app usage over time.
• foxbee 5y ago
  I can't help but think Facebook (the app) is on the way out. They've been around long enough and the scandals have damaged their rep. It's time for Mark to focus on one of his other toys.
• coltonmorris 5y ago
  I made a fun domain for you tik tok lovers: https://nicetik.tk https://nicetik.tk