
How TikTok Is Rewriting the World - ProAm
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html
======
ilaksh
A few weeks back I heard about TikTok on HN. So I installed it. I looked at
some of the videos it was feeding me for like half an hour. I'm 41 years old
so to me they mostly looked like kids or teenagers. About half of the videos
were mildly amusing but trivial, and maybe half I could barely watch because
they were so excessively cutsey or repetitive that I could not tolerate them.

So I forgot about it and did not open the app after that. But then every few
days or whatever I would get a notification and it was TikTok. What I remember
was that it was mainly random teenage girls saying or doing something trivial
and mildly entertaining or just stupid but while they were doing it they were
subtly showing off their legs or bodies in some way.

Since I'm not a teenager and half of the videos were quite annoying, I had to
uninstall it.

~~~
mrweasel
The New York Times description of TikTok as a service makes it sound
absolutely awful, but that might be due of my age.

~~~
berberous
Here's two Twitter threads of some of the worst or TikTok. It's so so bad it's
kind of funny:

[https://twitter.com/kenjac/status/1099426350488866818?s=21](https://twitter.com/kenjac/status/1099426350488866818?s=21)

[https://twitter.com/mikaela_wild/status/1097558817364234241?...](https://twitter.com/mikaela_wild/status/1097558817364234241?s=21)

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SimpleMinds
I have similar experience as other commenters, tried TikTok, found it very
boring and silly. But then I tried the original, Chinese version (Douyin) and
the quality of the content there is so much better than TikTok.

You can actually see a lot of gifs right now on reddit being taken straight
from Douyin because that's where cool/fun stuff is being created.

To compare with Vine - by not having time limit, I was able to see the 30sec
video of how too cook one of the Chinese dishes, or 1 minute video of a metal
welder creating one of his metal sculptures.

It's extremly addictive I think, because content might be realy short or
quite-but-not-too long.

I'm trying to say in a roundabout way that Douyin content is miles ahead of
TikTok content. I haven't seen too much of the TikTok's girls seeking
attention content issue.

~~~
ilaksh
If that's the case then it's an evolution of video content and a totally
different story than the creepy teenagers stuff. Because one of the big
advantages of YouTube is that the content is sort of compressed. There is less
filler content like a TV show would need to complete a time slot. The content
is more information-dense. These apps take that up a notch or two.

That doesn't necessarily work for everything but for many things cutting out
the fat is going to deliver more information in a shorter time.

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anfilt
No it is not rewriting the world...

~~~
marpstar
Take the post title and replace TikTok with any startup you've heard about on
HN. Beyond cliche at this point.

~~~
snaky
With any startup with half billion active monthly users.

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pavlov
The Information wrote recently [1] that ByteDance (owner of TikTok) has been
spending billions on overseas marketing for TikTok, apparently spending more
than $300M on just Google Ads in 2018.

It's working in some large markets but not others:

 _" Compared to the exponential growth in India, cracking the U.S. market has
been more challenging. While TikTok became one of the most downloaded apps in
the U.S., the number of people who actively use the app is far less
impressive. TikTok’s 30-day user retention rate in the U.S. has been around
10%, compared to more than 30% in India, people with knowledge of the matter
said."_

[1] [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-bytedance-
pla...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-bytedance-plans-slack-
rival-even-as-losses-mount)?

------
AllegedAlec
I'm still not sure on how TikTok is different from Vine...

~~~
billfruit
Makes you wonder why they shutdown vine.

~~~
egypturnash
[https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-
died-t...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-twitter-
shutdown) kinda suggests a mix of reasons:

* vine’s founders resisted aggressive monetization * instagram added short videos and _did_ monetize them a lot * marketers quit spending money on sponsored vines and started spending it on sponsored instagrams * twitter just kinda sat on their thumbs with regards to putting any resources into vine, the founders drifted away

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KangLi
It's crap. An app enjoying its peak moment. In 2 years it will be gone

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alvatech
I'm not a TikTok user but recently my Instagram explore Tab is filled with re-
uploads of the videos created in TikTok. So it looks like it's getting
insanely popular.

~~~
rasz
so are pr0n video aggregators

~~~
scotty79
Adult version of TikTok might be interesting. This might be purely adult user
generated entertainment or sort of a dating app.

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Simulacra
It feels like Vine 2.0 but for kids. I don't see this lasting long.

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Grue3
Just like Vine... and Snapchat... and MySpace... Who would've thought people
grow out of apps targeted at young people.

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hackbeer1
Hit or Miss!

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YUMad
Tiktok is very exploitative.

Teenage girls seekin attention through showing skin and acting provocative is
nothing new, but tiktok is amplifying it to hitherto unseen levels. Some of
these girls have multiple millions of followers while their content is mostly
repetitive uninspired lipsyncing while gyrating the bottom or flapping the
chestbags.

Tiktok has a face-narrowing filter enabled by default; it makes your jaw look
much more narrow and gives you a pointy chin, making you look younger and more
attractive. It cant be turned off afaik.

The hordes of predominantly male followers donate significant amount of money,
of course. Tiktok takes its cut, of course. What % do you think it is? It's
not 2-5% like most donating platforms. It's not even the high 30% like in app
stores.

It is 50%. Tiktok takes half of every donation. It takes advantage of underage
girls, pimps them out and dangles their sexuality in front of the viewers, and
skins them for half of everything they get.

~~~
YUMad
Adding some examples of quality tiktok content:

[https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1552272052005.webm](https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1552272052005.webm)

[https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1551552722398.webm](https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1551552722398.webm)

[https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1551386495506.webm](https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1551386495506.webm)

~~~
AllegedAlec
Where are the Ricardo remixes though?

~~~
YUMad
HN is not ready.

