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TikTok and the Sorting Hat

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Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#141

Post by isoprophlex »

chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

Maybe this is too much navel staring but clearly, if the central thesis of the article is true, tiktok owes its success to prioritizing the content over the individuals. An interest graph, not a friend graph.

Besides stagnation... Could it be also an effect of "the West" becoming more open to collectivist ideals, where the individual is less important, and it's more about what you follow and not who you follow?

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#142

Post by egypturnash »

wenbin wrote: post #135
mgraczyk wrote: post #121

> How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps Part of the explanation is that they weren't in Shanghai. The founders both worked full time at US tech companies in California when musical.ly was founded. musical.ly may have been founded while they were temporarily in Shanghai, but the founders were not some random people who didn't understand US culture. This is import…

The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience). They raised money to build education product with short videos in it. The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part. Sounds familiar? YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and ke…

Flickr: initially an image management/sharing tool for a 2d online game. Cut the game, kept the image sharing.

Slack: initially an internal communication tool for another incarnation of the same game. Cut the game, kept the chat.

(An incarnation of this game did briefly exist between these two, but only lasted about a year.)

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#143

Post by creeble »

hardtke wrote: post #81
chvid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not media format (short video clips) but the "sorting hat". That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ...

This thread is completely missing the draw of TikTok, at least as it pertains to my teenagers. TikTok makes it fun and compelling to create content. My teenagers will actually go places with their friends to "make TikToks." The reason it is compelling, and this is not true of any other current social network, is that good content will get eyeballs -- the algorithm seems to be "fair" in terms of playing your content t…

I wonder how much content there would be if they hadn't licensed music for people to dance / lipsync to.

I haven't seen that many TikTok videos, but I haven't seen many that didn't have music in them, and I don't think any of it was original.

Licensing music has never been easy, and I don't get how two guys (even from silicon Valley) were able to do it from launch.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#144

Post by young_unixer »

quicklime wrote: post #70
sandworm101 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. Less monopolies, more so western culture. Many of TikTok's algorithms would be subject to great scrutiny if run by a western company. YouTube would face riots if it were caught openly supressing or hiding videos of disabled, unattractive, or simply poor people. But such "innovation" is fine for a Chinese company. https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/tiktok-disabled-use…

I feel like as of late, when China sees some success that the US does not, there’s a sentiment that they succeeded only because they’re a lesser society. They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom, or TikTok succeeded because Chinese corporations are happy to discriminate against groups that western corporations would obviously protect out of the goodne…

> or TikTok succeeded because Chinese corporations are happy to discriminate against groups that western corporations would obviously protect out of the goodness of their hearts.

No one believes western companies do it out of the goodness of their heart.

They do it in part because of fear of backlash and in part because their CEO's (especially Twitter's, Youtube's and Reddit's) want to project a philantropist image without actually doing good things.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#145

Post by preommr »

Instead of being amazed that TikTok beat juggernauts, maybe it should be reframed that they beat companies that have terrible products.

Sine we're talking about niches and customized feeds, let's look at reddit. My god is the reddit app absolutely horrendous. It's so bad I use the web app in desktop mode because other forms have terrible UX. They just don't care.

Or let's talk about another site that was mentioned: youtube. It's like Google with all their money, doesn't really care to spend real money on trying to solve problems. If they dumped something like 100-200 million into better community outreach, and actual going in and tagging videos, and dealing with content, the service would be so much better. Instead, they made their money on search, and now it's spinning it's wheels trying to find clever algorithms to solve problems.

We knew there was a market for an app that lets you easily create, edit and upload videos. Vine proved the formula worked. TikTok stepped in and filled the void.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#146

Post by peacefulhat »

dfxm12 wrote: post #74
quicklime wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like as of late, when China sees some success that the US does not, there’s a sentiment that they succeeded only because they’re a lesser society. They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom, or TikTok succeeded because Chinese corporations are happy to discriminate against groups that western corporations would obviously protect out of the goodne…

They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom Who made this argument?

Yeah, it's really more like complete denial that China has less covid deaths per capita than USA, let alone 100x less. Though I have definitely seen statements like "well, this is the price of freedom and democracy."

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#147

Post by strombofulous »

egypturnash wrote: post #142
wenbin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience). They raised money to build education product with short videos in it. The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part. Sounds familiar? YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and ke…

Flickr: initially an image management/sharing tool for a 2d online game. Cut the game, kept the image sharing. Slack: initially an internal communication tool for another incarnation of the same game. Cut the game, kept the chat. (An incarnation of this game did briefly exist between these two, but only lasted about a year.)

What was the game called?

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#148

Post by dilyevsky »

jehlakj wrote: post #140
wenbin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The musicaly people were already veterans in Silicon Valley tech scene (not young under silicon valley standard & with years of working experience). They raised money to build education product with short videos in it. The education product was not doing well. So they cut everything and kept the short video part. Sounds familiar? YouTube was initially a dating website with videos. Then they cut the dating part and ke…

For a second I thought you were going to mention vine.

With vine twitter went one step further and got rid of video part too

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#149

Post by tanilama »

quicklime wrote: post #77
dfxm12 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have fewer coronavirus cases only because Chinese people are docile, obedient sheeple who hate freedom Who made this argument?

The idea of Chinese people (and Asians in general) being obedient to authority is something that I’ve heard frequently from people and in the news, but I didn’t mean to imply that sandworm101 made that particular argument.

This has some truth to it. And I don't think people should take it like it is a bad thing.

Not every country on the planet is so egoistic like Americans, where self discipline for greater good means communism /s

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#150

Post by mundo »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #71

Is anyone else here trying to reduce their use of technology outside of the workplace? My hobbies are music, painting, and woodworking, and it's all I can muster to focus on a screen from 9-5. I do comment here on HN and I peruse other websites, but I don't actively engage with any social media except HN. I just find myself questioning the merits of attention spent on these social media platforms, given the informati…

> Maybe this is where TikTok has succeeded: short, snappy, quickly accessed videos

I think this is precisely backwards. Teens like video apps because they have time to sit around watching videos. Adults gravitate towards text and images because they require less of a time commitment.

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