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

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

#81

Post by dingi »

hot_gril wrote: post #43
zeehio wrote: post #17

Last week I was travelling on a different country. I was mostly without WiFi and I bought a prepaid SIM card with some GB. TikTok ate 2GB of "background data" in two days, even if I did not open the app. So it's not hard for me to guess how they do it... (Yes, background data is now disabled for TikTok on my phone... I learned my lesson)

Won't be long before some cell plans have special discounts for TikTok data like with WhatsApp. Unless it's a thing already.

its already a thing in some countries. Operators in my country have unlimited packages for social media and streaming services.

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

#82

Post by encoderer »

nostromo wrote: post #25

> Compare that to the Reddit video player This is worthy of it's own question. Why is Reddit's player so uniquely bad? It's worse than any other video player on the entire internet.

Is Reddit what engineering at scale looks like when not funded by a surveillance monopoly?

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

#84

Post by motoxpro »

ipaddr wrote: post #63
iKlsR wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This list is focused on videos but the search is what is beyond good, it's one of the best searches I've ever seen for content. You can literally use it as you would google. I'm assuming they transcribe their videos as well as run some object detection or image to text models that generate some metadata as to what is happening and or who or what is in a clip.

You are talkabout tiktok? The search is terrible. You can't order by date, no filters. Has this magically improved overnight?

You can't order by date or filter on Google either. I think the fact that young people use it over google as a search says something.

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

#85

Post by motoxpro »

dan-robertson wrote: post #26

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…

I would say the Chinese market is MUCH more competitive than the US market. Do a few searches for the salaries of AI/engineers. Just because Chinese companies don't operate in the US doesn't mean they are small.

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

#86

Post by extra88 »

motoxpro wrote: post #84
ipaddr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talkabout tiktok? The search is terrible. You can't order by date, no filters. Has this magically improved overnight?

You can't order by date or filter on Google either. I think the fact that young people use it over google as a search says something.

You can order Google News by date and Search (at least in a desktop view) can be filtered to only include results from the past hour, day, week, month, or year.

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

#88

Post by jasmer »

I don't think feeding those videos is a terribly hard engineering challenge for Engineers who are organized and are backed with the right financing. And who for one reason or another seem to be motivated to work almost 7 days a week.

Reddit is crap because of organizational history, and it's no a huge revenue-rich company, in a market with very high salaries.

TikTok has a a few magic ingredients, but 'dancing girls' as a starting point is one of them, the other is the learning algorithm. BTW I do not think that algorithm is magic - just good.

If you see how some Chinese companies have so many focused people and adapt so reactively to things, and they're backed by ample money.

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

#89

Post by KRAKRISMOTT »

motoxpro wrote: post #85
dan-robertson wrote: post #26

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…

I would say the Chinese market is MUCH more competitive than the US market. Do a few searches for the salaries of AI/engineers. Just because Chinese companies don't operate in the US doesn't mean they are small.

Half their country isn't up to US middle class standards yet, they still have plenty of cheap labor to acquire.

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

#90

Post by karmasimida »

I think technologies wise TikTok is similar to that of Youtube Shorts

Both seems to preload about 10 secs of next 4-5 videos.

I think here is the trick: if your recommendation gets sufficiently good, then user won't eagerly scrolling next just to get content they would actually watch, which makes serving less of noticeable problem. There is a feedback loop here.

On TikTok I rarely gets content that would skip at first sight, which speaks to strength of its algorithm.

Don't know about Reddit/Twitter, but Netflix's video is a whole different business overall, all the DRAM and stuff.

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