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TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

businessinsider.com

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Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#281

Post by hombre_fatal »

m_ke wrote: post #58
nbardy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time we have the rise of long form podcasts. Producing quite the opposite effect.

90% of podcasts these days are just people rambling on without much thought while trying to sell you something. I have a feeling that most people who listen to podcasts do so for background noise, as a way inject some dopamine into their boring commute or routine chores. I used to listen to podcasts a ton but switched to listening to lectures or conference talks.

At the same time, the criticism is useless without knowing the podcasts someone is listening to.

Pretty big difference between listening to Wendy Williams vs, I don't know, philosophical debates and deep dives into history and all sorts of intellectually stimulating things. Most people I know including myself listen to the latter which is nothing short of welcome mind-expansion and I'm a more interesting person as a result of it.

People listening to podcasts or reading books really aren't the people I'm worried about in the modern era.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#282

Post by simmanian »

komali2 wrote: post #249
simmanian wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had been worried about the Chinese influence in America for a while in the past, but recently came to the conclusion that the American value system is not at risk of being taken over by the Chinese value system. The American system pushes forward individual freedom, humanism, liberalism, capitalism -- things that transcend the boundaries of race, borders, etc. I would argue these values were quickly adopted by many…

My concern is not that the PRC will try to put PRC values on the USA, it's that they'll foment negative cultural mores here in the USA - i.e., tap into latent Islamophobia to defend their persecution of Uighur Muslims, and in doing so increase Islamophobia in the USA.

I think the _real_ problem is that our current social, political, and economic systems are ill-equipped to deal with the advances of technology. It's not just the increase in propaganda (which I argue is enabled by technology) that creates instability. It's the fact that our environment is collapsing, the capacity to modify human embryos is within our reach, longevity researches are showing promising results, millions of jobs will be replaced by automation. It is my belief that the real task is not to combat the PRC, but to figure out what systems will provide the most value in the future, and work toward those goals.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#283

Post by darzu »

keepper wrote: post #25

Facebook’s privacy faux pas will be nothing compared to a company who’s government can request any of users data (Chinese or not) with zero oversight. We are in for a wild ride as major Chinese companies start building successful global companies.

Except who will know?

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#285

Post by JCharante »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #122
chrshawkes wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have children, all the children are using it. The other day two famous TikTokers we're spotted in a Northern VA mall and it was a pretty big deal. It's not fake.

Just because a lot of kids are using it doesn't mean it has 1.2Bn downloads. That's a lot of downloads. Gmail is 10 years old, for context, and it's ubiquitous for basically the entire population, and it has barely 4 times that. When you account for the fact that most Gmail users have gone through several phones and downloaded Gmail several times, it seems pretty suspicious that an app only for kids has 1.2Bn downloa…

So there's 抖音 and TikTok. They have completely seperate databases and installers (unlike WeChat). On IOS, if you are geolocated (or maybe it's locale restricted?) in the Chinese market then you can only download 抖音。If you are located in the international regions, then you will only find TikTok.

Since there is no Google Play Store in China, you will only find TikTok there [in the Play Store]. To install 抖音 you simply download the apk from their website and side-load it.

Since the article states

> TikTok has hit 1.5 billion total downloads across the App Store and Google Play

I believe that IOS has around 13% market share in China. So this is missing out on A LOT of downloads.

Then again it's hard to believe that there are 1.5 billion downloads for tiktok (ios + android) and 抖音(just ios). Then that must mean that it's not counting 抖音 downloads on Android.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#286

Post by timwaagh »

parliament32 wrote: post #146

The metrics make sense: as a user of both platforms, I'm spending far more time on TT these days than IG. My biggest gripe is Instagram is absolutely filled with ads: you get ads in between stories, ads in between posts, then a good portion of actual posts are "sponsored" (so ads from the posters themselves)... it's just a really bad mire of advertising and people trying to sell me stuff. Meanwhile TikTok is still fa…

TikTok is the first social medium I don't get. It isn't very good at figuring out my tastes and just serves me generic hot people content. It doesn't try to figure out who I might want to contact with either. Maybe I'm getting old or something.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#287

Post by JCharante »

dehrmann wrote: post #113

TikTok's grown so fast I have to wonder if it's a fad. It's built around a pretty specific interaction. When people get bored of dancing to 15 sec music clips, what's going to keep them there? Will they be able to pivot to something more engaging, or will that just look too much like Facebook or Instagram?

> When people get bored of dancing to 15 sec music clips, what's going to keep them there?

Is that what TikTok is? I only use 抖音 which is definetely not that (there are a lot of dog videos, Bart Baker singing patriotic songs, Bart Baker staging skits where he makes americans love Chinese snacks, Alan Walker's team posts pretty frequently, and like 2-minute episodes of original dramas). Some video game highlights and like some really shallow plots where A treats a service worker badly, and then they show A's significant other be disgusted by the behavior and give the service worker a giant tip or something.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#288

Post by president »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #27

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 is almost hard to trust CCP entities given their track record. Businesses in China do not conform to audits like Dodd-Frank [1] making it extremely hard to verify any data coming from within Chinese borders. Just last week, researchers found that CCP-supplied organ donor data had a near-perfect match with organ transplant data [2] suggesting that CCP has been doctoring the data. Just look at the graph of the data [3], which shows anomalous near-perfect match of a quadratic function.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street...

[2] https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s129...

[3] https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s129...

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#289

Post by dmix »

filoleg wrote: post #274
asdff wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podcasts that many people have playing constantly. In the car or on the train. In the elevator. At work. In the bathroom. At the store. At home. For many people, it's mindless banter they put on in the background while doing other tasks. Youtube, but you can use your eyes. But when do you get a free thought that's entirely your own? Just a moment when someone or something isn't barking at you to listen to this or buy…

This reminds me of that "alarming" picture[0] taken on a Philadelphia train used to scaremonger people about how everyone is addicted to the newspapers and how it degrades the fabric of society and thought by making everyone antisocial.[1] Yes, there are many arguments that can be brought up about differences between newspapers and social media, etc., but I strongly feel like it is essentially the same kind of neo-lu…

Just like all of the people pushing FUD that Tinder/Grindr and one night stand culture would kill true relationships (or worse implications on wider society). Even though everyone I know who used those earlier in their life and are now in serious relationships with people, often one's they met online.

People are always looking for the 'surprising' reasons why society is really in decay and everyone's living their day-to-day lives completely blind to it - except us few who know better.

There's huge demand for this sort of thing to be true, it's been the basis of every cult ever, plenty of extreme political movements, religions, and a million think pieces through history. Yet life and culture always ends up being far more boring and resilient than predicted.

Re: TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

#290

Post by mhluongo »

dehrmann wrote: post #100
mhluongo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it was split out from the main app: https://www.vox.com/2014/8/7/11629664/facebook-messenger-spl... > The move allows Facebook developers to focus more exclusively on features and improvements for each individual app. Of course, it also requires users to download another Facebook property onto their smartphones, a not-so-subtle way for the company to increase app downloads. I found this on Beluga, but it smells o…

The article you posted is about how Beluga was turned into Messenger...
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