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To write something obvious: companies generally don’t succeed or fail based on their technology. A good user experience is necessary for TikTok to do well but i

To write something obvious: companies generally don’t succeed or fail based on their technology. A good user experience is necessary for TikTok to do well but it doesn’t matter whether they achieve because of ‘good’ tech, whatever that is, or in spite of it. I think there were a few things for the business where tech was important: - being good at serving/storing videos - the recommendation engine. There are two parts, one is taking user preferences as a strong signal (not a tech decision) and another is recommendation algorithms which produce this effect (I think they’re rote a paper that suggested things about how this worked) - being an app people wanted to use (weakly tech but mostly not) I think a some of the explosive growth came from the app having been iterated on a bunch in China first so it seemed more polished when it reached the west. But I could be pretty wrong there. To answer the question about engineering talent: - Chinese people will go to the US, get great educations at US universities, some get denied work visas or otherwise choose to return to China. TikTok can employ them in a less competitive labour market and not fight companies like Google which don’t operate in China.

dimmke 4y ago
>But I could be pretty wrong there. The history of TikTok is actually murkier than that. I listened to a podcast about this, I wish I could find it again. The narrative that seems to be popular is that ByteDance launched this app called Douyin in China and it was so successful they decided to launch it globally, and thus TikTok was born and hit the ground running. But the podcast I listened to told the story from the perspective of the founders of Musical.ly - which was an app that was started by two Chinese software engineers that were living and working in silicon valley. Originally it was supposed to be a video app about teaching (?) but pivoted and gained a lot of traction with teenagers in the U.S. This is where the origins of TikTok being thought of as a "teen dancing/lip syncing app" came from. Musical.ly got acquired by ByteDance. - Douyin launched in September 2016 - Musical.ly launched in 2014 and by June 2016 had over 90 million registered users. Around 2016-2017 is when I first remembered seeing videos with the Musically watermark (very similar to the TikTok mark) usually on r/cringe on Reddit. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfT0jRYaovE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfT0jRYaovE - ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for almost 1 billion dollars a year after launching Douyin and merged them to create TikTok. I never used Douyin or Musical.ly, but I think that a lot of Musical.ly's DNA was injected into TikTok and the idea that TikTok was a purely Chinese invention is a little revisionist. The thing that really cements this to me is that Alex Zhu, one of the Musical.ly founders was the first CEO of TikTok. Also, looking at the type of content in those compilation videos definitely gives me the same vibe. So TikTok actually has roots in silicon valley way more than people think it does. I think that noting this history is interesting because TikTok is touted as being so purely Chinese, and it's certainly owned entirely by a Chinese company now so I'm not saying any concerns about the Chinese government having access are unfounded. But I think part of the fear around TikTok comes from "How did they create this app that is beating our apps and seems to have the product/market fit of a glove in our society? Have they been planning this?" But a lot of the iteration and pivoting happened with Musical.ly, in the U.S. and a Chinese company paid through the nose for it.
- preciousoo 4y ago
  I thought this was common knowledge but I guess not. But then again I lived with my preteen siblings when the whole musically/TikTok merger happened so for them it was huge news
  - dimmke 4y ago
    It's definitely not common knowledge- especially for people who don't use TikTok and only became aware of it in the last 2-3 years. And I actually think it benefits the Chinese government for this revisionist history of the app to be the story that "wins" - because it portrays China as this mysterious force with previously unknown insight, power, and plans. When in reality the bones of TikTok came directly out of the same place as most new social apps do. If you look at the Wikipedia article for Musical.ly - it goes through great effort to talk about how it was a Chinese company that happened to have a "Santa Monica office" but if you look at the Crunchbase profile for Musical.ly - the story is different. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/musical-ly/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/musical-ly/company_f... The companies that participated in those funding rounds are not blue chip VCs and do have foreign ties - but they are specifically focused on investing in US startups. I would love to see a journalist at The Verge or somewhere that writes about tech in the same way tackle this topic. I think it's a missing piece in a lot of the discourse around TikTok.
sirpunch 4y ago
> "TikTok can employ them in a less competitive labour market and not fight companies like Google which don’t operate in China." Is this really true though? I imagine the market for SDEs in china is much more competitive and cut throat. There are only so many locals/immigrants to choose from in the US, hence the higher salaries. A lot of top talent in Silicon Valley have almost worked at all FAANG companies.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Competition between employers, I think.
motoxpro 4y ago
I would say the Chinese market is MUCH more competitive than the US market. Do a few searches for the salaries of AI/engineers. Just because Chinese companies don't operate in the US doesn't mean they are small.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
  Half their country isn't up to US middle class standards yet, they still have plenty of cheap labor to acquire.
  - dimmke 4y ago
    TikTok has offices all over the world and competes for SDEs in the traditional places like Seattle and San Francisco: https://careers.tiktok.com/position?keywords=&category=6709824272514156812%2C6704215882479962371%2C6704215862603155720&location=CT_243%2CCT_157&project=&type=1&job_hot_flag=&current=1&limit=10&functionCategory= https://careers.tiktok.com/position?keywords=&category=67098... Any FAANG engineer or someone who looks at job postings in those areas would know this. The comments I see about TikTok on Hacker News in general are so much more low effort, low knowledge/low research than other areas it is genuinely concerning to me. There's so many blanket assumptions that go unresearched, unchallenged. It's bizarre.
    - dan-robertson 4y ago
      I think a large number of HN comments are low effort/totally wrong in a lot of areas (including some of mine). I haven’t noticed this being particularly the case for TikTok but I do notice it more for subjects I know more about.

dimmke 4y ago

>But I could be pretty wrong there. The history of TikTok is actually murkier than that. I listened to a podcast about this, I wish I could find it again. The narrative that seems to be popular is that ByteDance launched this app called Douyin in China and it was so successful they decided to launch it globally, and thus TikTok was born and hit the ground running. But the podcast I listened to told the story from the perspective of the founders of Musical.ly - which was an app that was started by two Chinese software engineers that were living and working in silicon valley. Originally it was supposed to be a video app about teaching (?) but pivoted and gained a lot of traction with teenagers in the U.S. This is where the origins of TikTok being thought of as a "teen dancing/lip syncing app" came from. Musical.ly got acquired by ByteDance. - Douyin launched in September 2016 - Musical.ly launched in 2014 and by June 2016 had over 90 million registered users. Around 2016-2017 is when I first remembered seeing videos with the Musically watermark (very similar to the TikTok mark) usually on r/cringe on Reddit. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfT0jRYaovE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfT0jRYaovE - ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for almost 1 billion dollars a year after launching Douyin and merged them to create TikTok. I never used Douyin or Musical.ly, but I think that a lot of Musical.ly's DNA was injected into TikTok and the idea that TikTok was a purely Chinese invention is a little revisionist. The thing that really cements this to me is that Alex Zhu, one of the Musical.ly founders was the first CEO of TikTok. Also, looking at the type of content in those compilation videos definitely gives me the same vibe. So TikTok actually has roots in silicon valley way more than people think it does. I think that noting this history is interesting because TikTok is touted as being so purely Chinese, and it's certainly owned entirely by a Chinese company now so I'm not saying any concerns about the Chinese government having access are unfounded. But I think part of the fear around TikTok comes from "How did they create this app that is beating our apps and seems to have the product/market fit of a glove in our society? Have they been planning this?" But a lot of the iteration and pivoting happened with Musical.ly, in the U.S. and a Chinese company paid through the nose for it.

preciousoo 4y ago
I thought this was common knowledge but I guess not. But then again I lived with my preteen siblings when the whole musically/TikTok merger happened so for them it was huge news
- dimmke 4y ago
  It's definitely not common knowledge- especially for people who don't use TikTok and only became aware of it in the last 2-3 years. And I actually think it benefits the Chinese government for this revisionist history of the app to be the story that "wins" - because it portrays China as this mysterious force with previously unknown insight, power, and plans. When in reality the bones of TikTok came directly out of the same place as most new social apps do. If you look at the Wikipedia article for Musical.ly - it goes through great effort to talk about how it was a Chinese company that happened to have a "Santa Monica office" but if you look at the Crunchbase profile for Musical.ly - the story is different. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/musical-ly/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/musical-ly/company_f... The companies that participated in those funding rounds are not blue chip VCs and do have foreign ties - but they are specifically focused on investing in US startups. I would love to see a journalist at The Verge or somewhere that writes about tech in the same way tackle this topic. I think it's a missing piece in a lot of the discourse around TikTok.

sirpunch 4y ago

> "TikTok can employ them in a less competitive labour market and not fight companies like Google which don’t operate in China." Is this really true though? I imagine the market for SDEs in china is much more competitive and cut throat. There are only so many locals/immigrants to choose from in the US, hence the higher salaries. A lot of top talent in Silicon Valley have almost worked at all FAANG companies.

HPsquared 4y ago
Competition between employers, I think.

motoxpro 4y ago

I would say the Chinese market is MUCH more competitive than the US market. Do a few searches for the salaries of AI/engineers. Just because Chinese companies don't operate in the US doesn't mean they are small.

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
Half their country isn't up to US middle class standards yet, they still have plenty of cheap labor to acquire.
- dimmke 4y ago
  TikTok has offices all over the world and competes for SDEs in the traditional places like Seattle and San Francisco: https://careers.tiktok.com/position?keywords=&category=6709824272514156812%2C6704215882479962371%2C6704215862603155720&location=CT_243%2CCT_157&project=&type=1&job_hot_flag=&current=1&limit=10&functionCategory= https://careers.tiktok.com/position?keywords=&category=67098... Any FAANG engineer or someone who looks at job postings in those areas would know this. The comments I see about TikTok on Hacker News in general are so much more low effort, low knowledge/low research than other areas it is genuinely concerning to me. There's so many blanket assumptions that go unresearched, unchallenged. It's bizarre.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    I think a large number of HN comments are low effort/totally wrong in a lot of areas (including some of mine). I haven’t noticed this being particularly the case for TikTok but I do notice it more for subjects I know more about.