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To me, the interesting question is why a foreign company is doing a better job of understanding what American teenagers wanted than domestic firms with seemingl
by hakfoo 4y ago
To me, the interesting question is why a foreign company is doing a better job of understanding what American teenagers wanted than domestic firms with seemingly infinite bankroll to work with.
Nobody forced anyone to install TikTok at gunpoint. Presumably, if there was a more compelling domestic product, the kids would go there instead. Why has that product failed to materialize?
I know, you can't really set out to manufacture "cool", but maybe we need to get back the spark in this sector. I don't think the existing players are capable of creating an appealing blank-slate social platform. They might have the cash and technical chops, but they have negative social currency. Facebook/Meta's brand is hopelessly tainted: if it's not creepy spying, it's still where Mom and Dad hang out to swap antivax memes. Google might have a little more cool left-- not much-- but they're also attached to such teen favourites as "crappy limited school-provided Chromebook" and "we have 92 chat apps on our phones and still can't reach each other".
- rexreed 4y agoThese things come in waves. Myspace - Facebook - Snapchat - Tumblr - Vine - Tiktok. There will be something next, and it will come from somewhere new. Don't ask why, just ask when.
- Balgair 4y agoForgive me if I'm totally wrong, but it's copyright law, right? TikTok lets you put current popular music on the videos without a care for copyright, correct? As they are Chinese, they don;t really care about any lawsuits. The same is not true for US based companies, thus they don't have as good of music on it. Also, again, sorry if I totally wrong here!
- anomie31 4y agoI'm pretty sure ByteDance does license music. I don't know if they license all of it, but I'm pretty sure the RIAA or ASCAP could easily get an injunction if they didn't license any music that was theirs.
- ajhurliman 4y agoThey do license the music, it's very ham-fisted though. They just pay out huge lump-sums to keep PROs happy. I've heard they're trying to build something more sophisticated like YouTube's Content ID system to get more accurate numbers on who/how much they should be paying.
- powerapple 4y agoTikTok pays a lot money for the popular music, they are all licensed so users can use them for free. New artists make more money on TikTok than other platforms. https://social.techjunkie.com/how-does-tik-tok-use-music-legally/ https://social.techjunkie.com/how-does-tik-tok-use-music-leg... I am expecting TikTok to release a music app in the future since they have already paid for the music.
- dafty4 4y agoEver heard of Japanese toy franchises? Sometimes foreign stuff sells better than domestic.
- lmm 4y ago> Nobody forced anyone to install TikTok at gunpoint. Presumably, if there was a more compelling domestic product, the kids would go there instead. Why has that product failed to materialize? TikTok had zero qualms about making their algorithm favour pretty people, rich people, people with lighter skin.... What American product manager would dare suggest doing that?
- npteljes 4y agoI agree with you - the less inhibitions they have, the more popular they can get. From this standpoint, morals and sensitivity to certain things just add friction to popularity. If someone does this in polictics, they call it populism. Now, of course, this isn't a holy grail for success. But it's a factor.