Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#1

Post by gardenhedge » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:28 AM UTC

You may like or dislike Tiktok based on it's content and style of delivering that content but I think everyone has to admit that technically it is quite the achievement.

It's video based and delivers video really well. It rarely buffers or fails to load. Compare that to the Reddit video player or the Twitter video player or Vimeo. It's much better. Netflix loads poorly initially for me quite a bit (granted it's trying to load much higher quality).

How did they manage to get the engineering talent when seemingly FB, MS, Netflix, Amazon, Google are all fighting for that talent?

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#2

Post by DrWormarld » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:30 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#3

Post by EMIRELADERO » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:48 AM UTC

Disclaimer: speculation

TikTok is a Chinese company. The source code is mostly written in China. I'd say that TikTok is the Chinese equivalent of a FAANG company.

They get the talent because the fight is happening in the FAANG space, they are not there.

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#4

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:53 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#5

Post by dbbk » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:55 AM UTC

"It rarely buffers or fails to load" this is because the next 6 or so videos are known and buffered ahead of time. This isn't really the case on other sites.

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#6

Post by 908B64B197 » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:57 AM UTC

Remember Vines?

As they say, "Good artists copy, great artists steal"...

Being headquartered in a jurisdiction that doesn't care for intellectual property sure must be convenient.

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#7

Post by swang720 » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:58 AM UTC

They have a gigantic pool of talented engineers to hire from in China.

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#8

Post by guptaneil » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 12:58 AM UTC

I don’t have any unique insights into TikTok nor do I use the app, but TikTok has several product advantages over those other platforms:

1. They only have a queue of videos. That means there is one video playing and they know exactly what the next N videos are going to be, so they can start buffering them early

2. The video plays are high intent. If you launch TikTok, you are 100% going to watch videos. This is not true for Reddit or Twitter, making it harder for them to preemptively buffer content or over-optimize their architecture just for video playback.

3. As you noted, the videos are lower quality and shorter than YouTube or Netflix videos. They also are exclusively optimized for mobile, so don’t need to worry about streaming videos larger than a phone screen.

4. Most videos in your feed might be a similar style. This one is a stretch but I wouldn’t be shocked if TikTok uses some ML to extrapolate highly compressed videos early in the buffer.

5. Depending on who you believe, ByteDance might have financial backing and motivations that make it easier to throw more money at this problem than its American competitors.

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#9

Post by NoPicklez » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 1:02 AM UTC

It's hyper focused on the feed that is just videos' that it determines for you. Therefore it is able to prepare and buffer multiple videos ahead.

I also think that for the public feed, people so see similar videos based on demographic etc so there is a form of caching that is likely applied.

Videos are all small clips as well and they're being loaded from TikToks content servers. With reddit and twitter you are often watching a video linked from another website.

I agree, Reddits video player is garbage.

Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?

#10

Post by sct202 » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 1:03 AM UTC

guptaneil wrote: post #8

I don’t have any unique insights into TikTok nor do I use the app, but TikTok has several product advantages over those other platforms: 1. They only have a queue of videos. That means there is one video playing and they know exactly what the next N videos are going to be, so they can start buffering them early 2. The video plays are high intent. If you launch TikTok, you are 100% going to watch videos. This is not t…

I wonder for me at least, why Instagram Reels is super blurry compared to TikTok, like since they should have the all the same conditions except for #5.