Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Which part of the Twitter files show this?
Most parts do.
Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
141–150 of 152 posts
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#142I 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 firs…
YouTube Shorts don't seem to operate on the same level as TikTok. Maybe I have a unique experience but every time I look at YouTube Shorts, it's literally the same batch of videos in the same order, day-to-day.
Same here. Same videos shown to me for weeks
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#143I think it preloads a shitload of stuff ahead, before you deciding to watch it. Predictive caching.
Engineering talent is historically mostly China based, and over there they can get Silicon Valley quality people for half the price and twice the working hours => order of magnitude engineering cost advantage over all the companies you mentioned.
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#144> 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.
They want to encourage you to use their mobile app
I'm using the same 3rd party Reddit app as I have been since 2013, and not only do videos work fine, I can download them to storage as well. Here's hoping Musk doesn't turn his attention to them anytime soon.
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#145> 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.
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Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#146never before seen so much cope in a HN comment section. lmao
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even ignoring these things, they seem to do pretty well. I only use TikTok by being linked to it, and the video always works. The same cannot be said of Reddit, which often just shows a spinner, or sometimes it gets stuck midway through the video, or sometimes keeps playing sound even when you navigate to a different page. I think Reddit is just especially terrible. They had to write custom code for handling the view…
The worst experience for me is trying to play videos in the google photos mobile app (or the website). It can take 1-2-3-4 minutes (or never) for it to finally play a video I uploaded from my phone a few days, weeks ago.
My god the google photos mobile app is oblivious, if I select a photo and make the mistake of swiping to the previous or next one, is game over for me, only a black screen awaits my despair. I have to close and reopen the app (same for web version) and then, only if I select the video/photo correctly the first time, after a lot of waiting, I can finally view my content.
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#148No one mentioned the UX design of Tiktok? From what I can recall, TikTok was the first one to let you to swipe to watch/switch videos, so users can easily be stuck on it, no matter the short video's quality is good or bad, interesting or boring. Since one single swipe, you changed to another, the cost is very low for user even the video quality is not good.
Vine? Musical.ly?
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#149In buffering, the first 20 (N) posts are pre-determined and can therefor be buffered when still on the first video.
What I find amazing is their extremely accurate recommendation page that keeps you hooked to the application.
Honestly I needed to delete it after the first week since I spent so much time on it.
Re: Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
#150I 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…
TikTok runs on top of AWS, and uses S3 to store uploaded videos. Each uploaded video is copied into several resolutions, copies of which are made available on each regional CDN.