Live data from Hacker News

TikTok Remix Culture

twitter.com

61–70 of 259 posts

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#61

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to…

Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account. For whatever reason though businesses like restaurants and bars will often nominally "have" a wide range of social media accounts, Instagram is often the only one with actual content. I used to be able to reasonably use these but I now seem to get a wall requiring login immediately. It's possibly/pro…

I've been using teddit.net because reddit on mobile gas become unusable. Someone here pointed me to it.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#62

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to…

Instagram in particular seems to have gotten much more aggressive in not letting you view anything without an account. For whatever reason though businesses like restaurants and bars will often nominally "have" a wide range of social media accounts, Instagram is often the only one with actual content. I used to be able to reasonably use these but I now seem to get a wall requiring login immediately. It's possibly/pro…

Mobile is especially bad lately since Firefox Mobile has gone walled-garden and you can no longer install a user agent switcher to get a true desktop page. The fact the "view desktop version" option on mobile browsers still tells the server you're on a mobile device is utterly perverse.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#63

What’s really interesting about TikTok is that they’ve seem to have successfully taken making a fool of yourself on the internet (and out in public if you dance outside) mainstream. I have no idea what compels otherwise everyday people to post embarrassing and sometimes way too personal videos for potentially millions of people to laugh at but they do it. Of course, there are a lot of issues with the app itself, but…

I noticed that as well, people are just not afraid of posting embarrassing content that you actually relate to. It's awesome to see just normal people doing normal stuff and millions of people cheering and commenting in an encouraging way.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#64

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to…

I disagree, it’s fairly restrictive outside of showing you one video if you’re in the browser. You can see the video you were linked to but not comments, other videos that use the same sound, other videos by the same creator etc.

It’s a pretty common pattern these days; you can also see IG progressively locking down web features tighter and tighter for example.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#65
post #43
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's the first social platform I've seen that has solved the new user growth problem - every user's first few videos are guaranteed hundreds of views no matter what. So good content naturally rises without having to be spammy/promote itself. Compare that to something like Twitch where growing a stream to even getting 30 regular viewers can take years of grinding and a ton of hustle. The average follower count f…

> I've seen that has solved the new user growth problem There's always a cost, established celebs have trouble keeping up their fame. There's always some big players quit Douyin (Chinese version of Tiktok) after burn out. No one rules Tiktok forever (which is a good thing for consumers)

That’s not a cost for Tiktok though, rather the opposite. They just need content to keep going, they don’t need to make individual creators rich necessarily. From their perspective the more control they have over who is popular, the better.

It could become a problem for them if another app offered creators a better deal, but such an app still has network effects to contend with (you can offer creators a better deal but if the viewers don’t follow them it won’t work).

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#66

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to…

Reddit used to be like that. Tiktok is young, it can change.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#67

I think part of TikTok's success is the fact that they have a public/guest browser platform[0] that doesn't restrict you from seeing content without an account. It means people who wouldn't usually have the mobile app can still be a part of the action, and that may eventually drive them to sign up. It's actually almost unbelievable that you can browse endlessly and never once be prompted to sign up unless you try to…

The difference seems to be if your company is in growth mode vs squeeze mode. Not to say that you're doing poorly if you're squeezing, you're just trying to extract every ounce of value from users regardless of the long term effects.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#68
post #60

I have never seen so many to say "average" people on tiktok like on any other social platform, in a sense that I can relate to those people and don't feel like a celebrity is trying to feed me some content down my throat. There's so much of normalization of everything that I'm blown away by how normal Tiktok is, you can see teenagers struggling in a school, you can see people hating their 9-5 jobs, you can see crafts…

i like this too and think it has a lot to do with how the app is based on the for you page more than followers. when you don’t need followers for people to see your content it really opens up the playing field to different types of content

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#69
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s great to occasionally see success stories from companies that break the mold and can be used as examples a-la-Craigslist. Without them we’re forever stuck with “I know that a signup lightbox on first visit is ugly, but it converts!”

Though, sadly, things like Facebook Marketplace are eating nice sites like craigslist: https://dealerpromoterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Sim...

I don't know if I'd call craigslist a nice site. I know it checks all the boxes that HN loves but when I'm trying to buy something simple from the site, I'd rather not have to give the seller my email and/or phone number. Last I checked, there was no way to message on the website itself.

Re: TikTok Remix Culture

#70
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely a fount of creativity! Maybe it’s all the Gen Zers but it’s also the least toxic social network around. There’s so much joyful content there.

It is probably the most heavily moderated social network. It is I think also something that must have been created by someone not from the US. Americans belief in free speech also means you get a lot of bad with the good. TikTok surgically removes the bad.

The moderation is a definite net positive. Though those with political viewpoints opposite a given user and anti-vaxxers have abused the stringent moderation to wantonly get videos taken down or users’ live stream disabled. Growing pains.
Post reply on HN