Live data from Hacker News

TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

businessinsider.com

31–40 of 331 posts

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#31
post #13
post #11

"It is the third most-downloaded app outside of gaming this year. Numbers one and two are WhatsApp and Messenger, while four and five are the Facebook app and Instagram." Facebook owns 4/5 of the most downloaded apps - just let that sink in for a minute. This space needs competition pretty badly.

There was competition and FB used their war chest to buy them all, sans messenger. They forced people to download messenger to see FB messages on mobile. They also lied and said you had a message when you really didn’t. Just to force the messenger download.

Didn't they acquire Messenger as well? I think it was called Beluga

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#32
post #11

"It is the third most-downloaded app outside of gaming this year. Numbers one and two are WhatsApp and Messenger, while four and five are the Facebook app and Instagram." Facebook owns 4/5 of the most downloaded apps - just let that sink in for a minute. This space needs competition pretty badly.

While I do agree that this space needs competition, I can't see a scenario in which this can happen. The combined user base of all the facebook apps is a considerable percentage of the world's population. Take out people with no access to internet or living in dictatorship or dictatorship-like regimes and you get probably north of 90% of all internet users. I know people in their 70's and 80's using facebook at this point. And while some countries are more skeptical about it, my country has fully embraced it. To the point where "having a website" is a synonym of "having a facebook page". In reality almost all businesses use facebook exclusively(which is a huge problem for people like me who have blocked all facebook services from my network but that's my problem). The only way a competitor could come into existence at this point the way I see it is a complete collapse of facebook as a company(as in bankruptcy). No one will ditch something that is essential to their existence for something that will only drag them down. Look at G+: IMO as a product the execution was absolutely flawless. Yet it's no more.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#33
post #10

Can you find interesting video(non funny) on tik tok ? For example if your interested in bike, can you find cool bike related stuff ? Or is it just some people doing funny thing with some music on it ? I tried it a few months ago and found only funny videos. It's cool but it's not what's going to create a account on it. I like Instagram or YouTube because I can follow thing I'm interesting in.

You can search for things, and you can follow accounts that post things you're interested in. For example, I follow several accounts that show clips of renovating homes, or using power tools in interesting ways, or interesting construction techniques, etc.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#34
post #15
post #11

"It is the third most-downloaded app outside of gaming this year. Numbers one and two are WhatsApp and Messenger, while four and five are the Facebook app and Instagram." Facebook owns 4/5 of the most downloaded apps - just let that sink in for a minute. This space needs competition pretty badly.

This is less because Facebook is big and more because it’s the largest tech company without an OS. More people use Google or Apple’s native Mail client, browser, calendar.

I would hardly consider Amazon as having an OS - but having actual decent mobile website experience and being a service that requires less use than social media probably helps

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#35

What amazes me is that Tik-Tok fills the void created when Twitter killed vine. Given the popularity of Vine, and the outrage when Twitter killed it, I have no idea why they thought it was a good move. I’m bullish on Tik-Tok because I think it’s the next logical evolution of social media (and totally captures the Vine fan base which was pretty big to begin with) First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then i…

I’ve been a user for a year now. It used to be that people watched it for the bad content - then intentionally bad content. The biggest TikTok compilations were “TikTok cringe”. But now...the content is actually good!

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#36
post #26

Im surprised at peoples comments like "its not organic growth" and "they'll never be profitable" - how is TikTok different to snap/insta/fb in the early years? The thing that matters in that biz is hitting critical mass of users. Then they can spend the next 10 yrs bleeding their users in long tail of platform stickyness.

huge advertising spends

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#37

From a fraud perspective, it would be extremely cheap to fake downloads. Since Chinese companies aren't audited the same way US companies are, yet they can still list on exchanges, having some outside "probable" growth metric gives more credibility to their internal numbers. I'm not saying it's all fake. I'm just saying it wouldn't take very much resources to fake this, and ByteDance has the resources, and we don't r…

It's probably not fake. My teenage sister has gone from "TikTok is so cringey" a few months ago to "I actually kind of like it". It's now socially acceptable to use so it's in the clear. I saw someone using it on the airplane last week too.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#38
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is less because Facebook is big and more because it’s the largest tech company without an OS. More people use Google or Apple’s native Mail client, browser, calendar.

I would hardly consider Amazon as having an OS - but having actual decent mobile website experience and being a service that requires less use than social media probably helps

Amazon sells their own devices with their own version of Android with their own app store. I would consider that their own OS.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#39

What amazes me is that Tik-Tok fills the void created when Twitter killed vine. Given the popularity of Vine, and the outrage when Twitter killed it, I have no idea why they thought it was a good move. I’m bullish on Tik-Tok because I think it’s the next logical evolution of social media (and totally captures the Vine fan base which was pretty big to begin with) First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then i…

I’ve been a user for a year now. It used to be that people watched it for the bad content - then intentionally bad content. The biggest TikTok compilations were “TikTok cringe”. But now...the content is actually good!

TikTok is a soft porn dosage for newer/emerging internet users.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#40

What amazes me is that Tik-Tok fills the void created when Twitter killed vine. Given the popularity of Vine, and the outrage when Twitter killed it, I have no idea why they thought it was a good move. I’m bullish on Tik-Tok because I think it’s the next logical evolution of social media (and totally captures the Vine fan base which was pretty big to begin with) First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then i…

> First there was text, both Facebook and Twitter. Then images with instagram. Now people want videos that they can consume in short bits of time en mass.

What you are describing is the continued fall to smaller and smaller bits of stimulation and information. I’m worried about the consequences of this on the human mind and humanity in general. Our tech is gradually eroding our ability to focus on anything for more than a few seconds. I don’t want a future that is some weird mix of Idiocracy and getting the Black Shakes from Johnny Mnemonic. We need people that aren’t easily manipulated by ads and disinformation campaigns and that can think long and clearly about something.

Post reply on HN