TikTok ousts Google to become favourite online destination

How is that actually possible, it baffles me that any website would have more hits than Google's home page, since it's the place people go to to get to other destinations on the web.

> it's the place people go to to get to other destinations

Not on mobile.

I avoided using TikTok until the company I work for announced a couple of months ago that they were investing in TikTok content. I went on the app to see our content and was also surprised how addictive it was. After I checked out our content I deleted the app. Since then I have twice reinstalled the app and used it for a week and then deleted it again.

For most web content I use https://freedom.to to allocate narrow time bands during the day when I have access to HN, Twitter, Reddit, etc. I look at this as enforced mindfulness of how much non-productive (or marginally productive) time I spend. I think that I may reinstall TikTok and control access with freedom.to.

There is a lot of fun stuff on the web and for myself, I just need a Buddhist middle path of enjoying this content, but not too much.

Anyway, I respect TikTok’s success and I like seeing competitors to FB, Twitter, Google, etc.

I wonder what the methodology was. The vast majority of people use tiktok on mobile, so surely it can't be actual website visits. If it's requests, then that's a fairly arbitrary metric as it depends mostly on the service's architecture. And if it's data volume, then obviously tiktok would win as it serves videos rather than text with some images like google search.

On a different note, did tiktok not click for anyone else? I'm seemingly the target audience, but the content served just didn't work for me. Most of it was uninteresting and even after consistently swiping away the content that I disliked the praised algorithm kept showing more of the same.