TikTok and the Sorting Hat • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#231

Post by WillPostForFood » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

wtracy wrote: post #213

WillPostForFood wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok. Music.ly blew up in 2015 and was in the top app charts for a year before Bytedance bought them. They were at 133 million registered user…

They "hit a wall" in the sense that they couldn't keep up the hockey stick style growth that venture capitalists have come to expect.

Maybe that's true, but in that case it was just Bytedance as a financial savior, not technical or product savior. Could have been Facebook, Google, or anyone with deep pockets.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#232

Post by villahousut » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #120

chvid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not media format (short video clips) but the "sorting hat". That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). Also notice that this model can be applied to other media formats: Text, pictures, audio ...

>I think it is completely meaningful to call it next generation (or second generation where the social graph model is the first generation). I don't really see it. We've seen the TikTok model before in Imgur, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Digg, and probably others. It's mostly memes, funny videos, how-tos, and attractive women. They've hit a sweet spot of editing tools and enforced short format to provide a c…

In all of the examples you provided there's either no personalization or you have to manually curate your feed. Tiktok and youtube are the only ones where your feed is automatically curate for you.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#233

Post by webninja » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 12:00 PM UTC

The author of this article mentions that the TikTok algorithm alone is worth 30B. One TikTok user claims to have figured it out.

1 rewatch = 6 points

1 completion = 5 points

Share = 3 points

Comments = 2 points

Like = 1 point

Videos with the most points above a minimum threshold are shown to an increasingly wider audience.

Full video: https://vm.tiktok.com/Jjv2cXC/