71–80 of 152 posts
I've noticed that TikTok will show you unfamiliar content about every 10 or so videos. I suspect this is to explore it's knowledge graph of categories you might be interested in, and also keeping things fresh. I've found this mechanism fantastic, as it's shown me videos of places around my hometown that I've gone out to visit that I would have no idea even existed in the first place. This on top of a more traditional…
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.
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.
> Being headquartered in a jurisdiction that doesn't care for intellectual property sure must be convenient. Like… YouTube with their shorts? A continuous, infinite scroll stream of $media is everything but an original invention, and most likely not protected by any IP law.
I think it's eastern tech culture. East tends to assume everyone is interchangeable and not as intelligent, and tries to bring people up via education. Whereas West tends to just hire talent and let them figure it out. Not everyone here speaks a common language, and if it is, it's almost certainly English. So documentation and communication is greatly simplified, smaller words, and a lot of conversing through code. L…
I learned how well code speaks when working with remote web/mobile app contractors who hardly spoke English and had a 12hr time difference. If they didn't understand something right the first time, it could cost a day of progress. I started giving them code or cURL examples on how to use every backend call I implemented, often using multiple together. We ended up better oiled than some fully-localized teams I've been on.
Now I just work with other Americans in the Google offices, and I've seen success focusing our internal communications and docs more on examples. I often complain about how many English words our docs have, both internally and with customers. Nobody cares what my thing is or what philosophy it follows, they care how to use it. And like TikTok videos, brevity helps.
However, I don't think this explains TikTok's ability to load videos quickly.
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…
Regarding 3. I've seen tiktok on an iPad and the quality is surprisingly good. High res and no artifacts. People can already film 4k with their phones, and that's what's shared. Also young people scroll for hours (and adults, the average age is above 25 afaik) so watch-time isn't less than on YT, probably even more. Lastly but most importantly, many people scroll through a huge pile of videos before watching even 10…
I believe the videos are actually 720p, that may only be on mobile devices though.
I have strong and complicated feelings about how good UX/UI needs to be in software. It often gets ignored especially in B2B settings, but there are certain times where it's so clear how crucial it was to get something right. I think about Spotify compared to Apple Music and how Spotify had a way of preloading songs so they played immediately that Apple Music never quite captured. TikTok definitely had the chops.
The one big technical issue I have noticed with TikTok as a user though, is that their comments go down a lot. It's clear that comments are handled by a different service and it seems way less stable. It's somewhat common to be able to load videos but trying to load the comments leaves you with an endless spinner.
I think it's eastern tech culture. East tends to assume everyone is interchangeable and not as intelligent, and tries to bring people up via education. Whereas West tends to just hire talent and let them figure it out. Not everyone here speaks a common language, and if it is, it's almost certainly English. So documentation and communication is greatly simplified, smaller words, and a lot of conversing through code. L…
> There's subtle differences here, but Google tends to use a lot more English words, and Huawei talks mostly in code. I learned how well code speaks when working with remote web/mobile app contractors who hardly spoke English and had a 12hr time difference. If they didn't understand something right the first time, it could cost a day of progress. I started giving them code or cURL examples on how to use every backend…
which I think is a false assumption - they don't need as much engineering talent, they do more with less.
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…
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To write something obvious: companies generally don’t succeed or fail based on their technology. A good user experience is necessary for TikTok to do well but it doesn’t matter whether they achieve because of ‘good’ tech, whatever that is, or in spite of it. I think there were a few things for the business where tech was important: - being good at serving/storing videos - the recommendation engine. There are two part…
The history of TikTok is actually murkier than that. I listened to a podcast about this, I wish I could find it again. The narrative that seems to be popular is that ByteDance launched this app called Douyin in China and it was so successful they decided to launch it globally, and thus TikTok was born and hit the ground running.
But the podcast I listened to told the story from the perspective of the founders of Musical.ly - which was an app that was started by two Chinese software engineers that were living and working in silicon valley. Originally it was supposed to be a video app about teaching (?) but pivoted and gained a lot of traction with teenagers in the U.S. This is where the origins of TikTok being thought of as a "teen dancing/lip syncing app" came from. Musical.ly got acquired by ByteDance.
- Douyin launched in September 2016 - Musical.ly launched in 2014 and by June 2016 had over 90 million registered users. Around 2016-2017 is when I first remembered seeing videos with the Musically watermark (very similar to the TikTok mark) usually on r/cringe on Reddit. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfT0jRYaovE - ByteDance acquired Musical.ly for almost 1 billion dollars a year after launching Douyin and merged them to create TikTok.
I never used Douyin or Musical.ly, but I think that a lot of Musical.ly's DNA was injected into TikTok and the idea that TikTok was a purely Chinese invention is a little revisionist.
The thing that really cements this to me is that Alex Zhu, one of the Musical.ly founders was the first CEO of TikTok. Also, looking at the type of content in those compilation videos definitely gives me the same vibe. So TikTok actually has roots in silicon valley way more than people think it does.
I think that noting this history is interesting because TikTok is touted as being so purely Chinese, and it's certainly owned entirely by a Chinese company now so I'm not saying any concerns about the Chinese government having access are unfounded. But I think part of the fear around TikTok comes from "How did they create this app that is beating our apps and seems to have the product/market fit of a glove in our society? Have they been planning this?"
But a lot of the iteration and pivoting happened with Musical.ly, in the U.S. and a Chinese company paid through the nose for it.
To write something obvious: companies generally don’t succeed or fail based on their technology. A good user experience is necessary for TikTok to do well but it doesn’t matter whether they achieve because of ‘good’ tech, whatever that is, or in spite of it. I think there were a few things for the business where tech was important: - being good at serving/storing videos - the recommendation engine. There are two part…
Is this really true though? I imagine the market for SDEs in china is much more competitive and cut throat. There are only so many locals/immigrants to choose from in the US, hence the higher salaries. A lot of top talent in Silicon Valley have almost worked at all FAANG companies.