Live data from Hacker News

TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

techcrunch.com

31–40 of 63 posts

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#32
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s misleading? I’ve seen a metric buttload of their ads on YouTube but I know basically nothing about it beyond that.

Heavy sexualization in ads (for an app targetted 13-17 demographic, not to mention the amount of predator behaviour in Musically pre-merge/acquisition in general) vaguely reminiscent of the "play now, my lord" times, fake X-out/buttons, incessant screaming/volume differences, abuse-esque ads (child voice begging for help + black eyes, etc) The ads contain content that would get YouTube uploaders demonetised and suspe…

Ever since it popped up on my radar I've had that same associated with shady, scumbag marketing. I can't believe it's taking off, ffs...

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#34
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s misleading? I’ve seen a metric buttload of their ads on YouTube but I know basically nothing about it beyond that.

Heavy sexualization in ads (for an app targetted 13-17 demographic, not to mention the amount of predator behaviour in Musically pre-merge/acquisition in general) vaguely reminiscent of the "play now, my lord" times, fake X-out/buttons, incessant screaming/volume differences, abuse-esque ads (child voice begging for help + black eyes, etc) The ads contain content that would get YouTube uploaders demonetised and suspe…

Strangely, I've never seen Tik Tok ads, care to show me what they look like.

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#35
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy sexualization in ads (for an app targetted 13-17 demographic, not to mention the amount of predator behaviour in Musically pre-merge/acquisition in general) vaguely reminiscent of the "play now, my lord" times, fake X-out/buttons, incessant screaming/volume differences, abuse-esque ads (child voice begging for help + black eyes, etc) The ads contain content that would get YouTube uploaders demonetised and suspe…

Ever since it popped up on my radar I've had that same associated with shady, scumbag marketing. I can't believe it's taking off, ffs...

I think that "taking off" is relative. We don't really know how much they are spending on ads at the moment to get all these installs, but I can tell you it's A LOT of money. This is not organic growth, and generally paying your way to the top doesn't work long-term.

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#37

I really despise TikTok, from the limited experience I’ve had with it (namely, someone sent me a TikTok video). They do this thing where they watermark your video with the company’s logo in the corner, but also make it vibrate , making it impossible to not focus on it instead of the video (oh, and it moves around between corners to make it harder to remove or ignore). In my mind, that’s a warning sign saying the comp…

The logo has the username as well. I assumed it's to prevent people from copying and taking credit for other people's work. (That said, I do see these videos with the logo cropped out)

That said, I still see no reason why there needs to be a company logo or why the logo needs to vibrate.

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#38

I'm kind of curious as to why the more established platforms are seeing multiple millions of downloads a month. Are people uninstalling apps and reinstalling them frequently?

If you have a billion users, and each one of them replaces a device every 10 years, that's 8+ million downloads a month just due to device replacements.

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#39
The Chinese internet has adequately introduced a new "proverb" summarizing Tiktok's popularity: 【南抖音北快手,智障界两泰斗】

Which essentially means: Tiktok in the South, Kuaishou [1] of the North, Two titans in a world of dumb-asses.

[1] Kuaishou is a major competitor to Tiktok and is popular in Northern China, Russia and Eastern Europe.

Of note is that Tiktok founder started off with news recommendation app Toutiao.

Re: TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month

#40

Maybe it surpassed downloads because almost everyone in the planet already has FB, YouTube, etc. installed, and not as many has TikTok installed? So I don't see how this metric is really that impressive.

When it's the strongest signal you have in your business, as an entrepreneur you've got to sell it. And in self-interest, TechCrunch wants to help sell the story so they're going to use the strongest signal the business will give them to validate relevancy. Those are likely the mechanics at play when the result is a title like that. Like you're saying, it's not really impressive, but it's probably the most interestin…

I wonder about the rate of reinstallations though. Over a month, some steady percentage of users is changing phones and reinstalling apps. If a new app is able to beat the (new installs + %reinstalls) of giant apps, that's impressive.

If the app stores don't count reinstalls as downloads, then, well, sorry you wasted your time reading this

Post reply on HN