TikTok and the Sorting Hat • Hacker News Board

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#31

Post by gruez » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #21

rollinggoron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this very similar to Vine, the old video social network? Which Twitter bought and properly crash a burned?

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 ...

>That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends.

don't most social networks have the "sorting hat" in the form of algorithmic feeds?

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#32

Post by whoevercares » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

fooqux wrote: post #24

rydre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation. American's will only wake up when it's too late. Zuck will bribe the government in the meanwhile. Corrupt countries become less competitive over time. America is trending on the path of corruption and it's visible to every outsider now, except for unfortunately American's themselves.

I'm sorry, did you just allude to America being more corrupt than China? Granted, I'm American, and thus biased. I do see corruption in my government, but from what I can tell it's a small drop in the bucket compared to what goes on in China. Although I guess there could be debate on what defines corruption. But I still hear tales of basically needing to openly bribe officials to get contracts through manufacturing.

FWIW, many legal political donation in the west will be considered bribery in China.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#33

Post by cycrutchfield » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

kangnkodos wrote: post #26

The article didn't have many details about the "For You Page feed algorithm". Any guesses as to how it analyzes a video, and which properties it looks at?

Latent visual features are likely a strong component. I imagine if you created a new account and started watching content with only blond people in it, the ranking algorithm would pretty quickly start showing you only blond people.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#34

Post by Firebrand » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

>At the time Musical.ly got renamed TikTok, it was still dominated by teen girls doing lip synch videos. Many U.S. teens at the time described TikTok as “cringey,” usually a kiss of death for networks looking to expand among youths, fickle as they are about what’s cool. Scrolling the app at the time felt like eavesdropping on the theater kids clique from high school. Entertaining, but hardly a mainstream entertainment staple.

TikTok devs mentioned PewDiePie reacting to these cringey videos as a large impact for the company. His massive gamer audience downloaded the app to make fun of the early TikTok users too and got sucked in. They started making memes instead of lip-sync videos and it took off from there.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#35

Post by op03 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

Next gen because of what? Being more addictive?

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#36

Post by aqme28 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

actuator wrote: post #30

chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

If we were really seeing the effect of monopolies how would Tiktok hold ground in US. FB could have actively gone after it and not allowed FB authentication or ads of Tiktok on FB. In fact, as mentioned in the article Tiktok grew by leveraging the dominant platforms like FB, Instagram. I would still wait and watch on Tiktok phenomenon. It is a viral thing but has no moat as such and only $0.5 billion in expected reve…

I think OP's point is that the American startup that could have turned into what TikTok is today (Vine) was bought only so it could be shut down.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#37

Post by jhedwards » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:40 PM UTC

chvid wrote: post #7

TikTok really is next-generation social media. Interesting that this should come out of China and not the west. Maybe we are seeing the effect of monopolies stifling innovation.

Somewhat anecdotal but the Chinese app game in general seems very strong. My wife does video editing on Chinese social media and the variety of apps she has for editing videos and photos is bewildering. She can add in all kinds of animation and video effects, and different apps will provide different editing experience and features.

I look in the US apple store for video editing and I just don't see that kind of variety in the free/low-cost tier.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#38

Post by chvid » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #31

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 ...

>That it breaks the traditional social media model with a news feed, discussions, a social graph of friends. don't most social networks have the "sorting hat" in the form of algorithmic feeds?

Try downloading it and just play with it for a bit without signing up.

Compare that with Instagram.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#39

Post by whlr » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

kangnkodos wrote: post #26

The article didn't have many details about the "For You Page feed algorithm". Any guesses as to how it analyzes a video, and which properties it looks at?

Don’t know much about this, but I would have thought TikTok relies on the watch patterns of its viewers, rather than direct video analysis.

Re: TikTok and the Sorting Hat

#40

Post by xivzgrev » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

this doesn’t surprise me at all. I work at a consumer company and we use neural networks to personalize feeds. Thousands of features feed in and each member gets a different feed. It doesn’t take much / long to personalize.

What I am surprised by is that YouTube or others dont use as effectively. Neural networks are very well known. or, is there something “next level” that TikTok is using that isn’t well known?

Also worth calling out that Netflix also used to use personalized recommendation engines, but eventually found that “top in the US” won out, which I found fascinating. If one person loves action movies for example, wouldn’t they find a list of those more appealing than a generic list of top 10? I sometimes get curious about top 10 but rarely actually watch them myself