
Vine founder launches TikTok competitor - einarvollset
http://Byte.co
======
meerita
TikTok has succeeded not because it has unique features. It simply started its
strategy to take on the world with the freshest possible generation of users,
children aged 11-14.

Look at the beginnings, it was disgusting, but they were there patiently
spending money to convince the generation that now with 18-21 already believes
that Instagram is just a stronghold of retirees and no community.

They now feel part of something unique because getting on Instagram meant
competing against those who were already established. Every social network
must be focused in this way. Today TikTok attracted all the big stars, and the
Instagram generation is really asking themselves, what is going on? (same
question snapchat users did back then), the truth is TikTok is eating
Instagram at some big pace and it will take it over completely soon.

Do you want to create a new social network? Aim for the 11-15 year old
population and in 3-4 years you will have the strongest, most faithful and
active community.

~~~
CPLX
This is nonsense, Tik Tok has succeeded because it is a fantastic digital
product.

It presents an entirely different vibe than the other services you mention and
is useful for different kinds of interaction and discovery. It’s simply really
engaging and enjoyable for people to use.

Also the reference to “attracted big stars” seems confusing to me. The genius
of the platform so far has been that it’s genuinely possible to participate as
a normal person and a lot of the other content is created by actual peers of
most users. As the stars and celebrity phenomenon grows there I think we’ll
see the platform start to deteriorate.

~~~
samhain
"It's the product not the people"

Sorry, but social networks are made of people, without the people you don't
have a product. He's trying to say that because important people create the
community then that's the most important thing to the product in this case.
Trying to say that the product creates the people makes no sense.

~~~
CPLX
But that’s the part that confused me. Has everyone commenting actually spent
time using the product?

The whole notable thing about Tik Tok is that “important” people didn’t create
the culture. It was created mostly by high school age kids sharing music and
dance videos.

I guess the premise is that since Tik Tok deliberately sought that market...
the success doesn’t count somehow... or something?

I mean like the entire planet is trying to market to that demographic. Nearly
everyone fails. The distinguishing feature of Tik Tok here is that it’s a
great well designed social product that’s fun to use and viral.

~~~
meerita
I've used it. Again, the UX/UI isn't strikingly enough to say, imho, "ok, this
is a new concept". In fact, when they started the app looked differently,
again, look at their first year or two and you will realise why they have
success. It's not the UX, Snapchat had the worst UX/UI ever but their success
was related to the mass of people they've appealed to.

~~~
arghwhat
The UX is optimized for insanely efficient mindless consumption.

Open, and you're immediately fed content with no interaction required. Not
happy with what you see? Swipe.

~~~
meerita
Then if you think that, why don't you copy it and have the same effect?
Because you can't and you will not get the same since isn't about UX but more
about appealing to a certain sector of the population in the best moment.

~~~
CPLX
For the same reason I can’t create a stream of 140 character messages or write
Stairway to Heaven again. Because someone already did the novel thing and
captured the initial audience attracted by that novelty.

~~~
meerita
No, you've claimed the UX was part of the reason they've triumph. And that is
not the point, again, is not about the song (most of the songs use the same
notes), it's about appealing to a certain group of people in the right time
and taken it over. They've started with videos, like Vine, then they moved on
to musical.ly style for youngers, and they merged. That's how they started and
gained traction until 2018 where they took it off

------
Scoundreller
As someone not very familiar with either: Why is TikTok succeeding while Vine
failed?

And why did Vine shutdown? How do you fail at user-generated content that you
can sell ads and more on?

I ask because I still run blogs that are < 5% of the size they used to be, but
still make me $50/month with zero effort in static mode. So why would I stop?

~~~
koonsolo
My son of 10 and almost all of his classmates use tiktok.

The real killer is the dances on the music. They don't have to invent a new
topic every time. They just see a music video they like, and imitate it.
Together with all the effects it's very easy to create a crazy video with
basically nothing.

~~~
unlinked_dll
To be fair there have been videos like that on basically every video platform
since the dawn of the internet

~~~
bdcravens
TikTok does a very good job of removing friction in creating and publishing
that content however.

------
aty268
Unfun fact, Colin Kroll, one of the founders of Vine and HQ Trivia died of a
heroin overdose a while ago. He was an interesting guy.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/nyregion/hq-trivia-
overdo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/nyregion/hq-trivia-overdose-
colin-kroll.html?auth=login-google)

~~~
ehsankia
The very first time you open the app, it does say "in loving memory of X",
though I can't remember now if that name was Colin Kroll or someone else.

~~~
timdorr
It was Jacob Marttinen. He was an engineer on Byte.

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lvturner
Opens with an obituary and then only provides Google as a sign in option - not
really sure how I feel about the on boarding so far

~~~
jml7c5
Obituary?

~~~
busymom0
As someone else pointed out:

> Unfun fact, Colin Kroll, one of the founders of Vine and HQ Trivia died of a
> heroin overdose a while ago.

~~~
frosted-flakes
No, it was Jacob Marttinen, one of Byte's engineers. He was killed last June
(hit by a car).

------
hastes
Really wish they went with 8 seconds instead of 6 for the videos.

I mean 1 byte = 8 bits after all.

Missed opportunity.

~~~
elfexec
> Really wish they went with 8 seconds instead of 6 for the videos. I mean 1
> byte = 8 bits after all.

Actually, a byte could and did have a variety of bits as they were generally
hardware dependent. Generally, a byte is the smallest number of bits that a
hardware can process. The most popular bytes early on were 4 bits and
especially 6-bit bytes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#6_bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#6_bit)

Octets ( 8 bit bytes ) became widely adopted after IBM went with octets in the
1960s and the industry basically followed and octets became so ubiquitous that
byte and octet became synonyms. It's similar to how google became a synonym
for internet search ( "you can just google it" ) or how coke became a synonym
for soda in parts of the world.

So while it is widely accepted that a byte is 8 bits, but technically, it
isn't true. Octets are 8 bits and most/all bytes in the world are octets. But
it doesn't necessarily have to be so. Octets always have to be 8-bits, but a
byte doesn't.

~~~
loh
This is exactly the type of response that keeps me reading HN daily. I love
it.

Apologies for the unsubstantive comment of my own here. I felt like an upvote
wasn't enough to show my appreciation.

------
_bxg1
From what I can tell its only advantages over TikTok right now are "made by
the person who had the idea first" and "isn't Chinese spyware". I doubt either
of those really matter to TikTok's core audience. Byte will have to do better
than that, I think.

------
chrisco255
I don't think it's a good approach to pitch yourself as a "X" competitor. It
immediately draws the comparison. Folks that are already happy with X will
most likely stick with X and folks that haven't tried X yet are now drawn to
split their attention between your app or service and X as they decide which
to invest their time and energy into, assuming they get what X is all about in
the first place.

~~~
earenndil
For a fuller analysis of this, see 'Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and the Quest to Kill
eBay' \- [https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-
quest-...](https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-quest-to-
kill-ebay-bb4992dc5020)

~~~
chrisco255
Great essay thank you for sharing!

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ponsin
It's a shame that they don't offer a web version. I was interested enough in
order to go to the webpage, but I don't want to download the app and make an
account

~~~
ehsankia
Yep, if not even for logging in, at the very least for sharing videos. None of
my friends have TikTok but being able to easily send them links to funny ones
goes a long way.

~~~
snackman7
You can share links from the app

~~~
ehsankia
In byte? How?

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brenden2
What I really want to learn from these guys is how they go out and raise money
so easily. I could do so much if it was that easy to get funding.

~~~
Reedx
Pitch: "I founded and sold the original TikTok. Now I want to make another
one."

VCs: "Where do we wire the money?"

~~~
Aperocky
Elon: I have this next great idea.

VC: Please take our money.

~~~
sixQuarks
more like:

Elon: I have this next great idea. *pandemonium results in 4 deaths as VCs get
crushed by the crowds

------
adzm
Can these videos be directly linked like via a byte.co url? Or is it all
trapped in an app? I explored it a bit on Android but couldn't figure out how
to just share a link, not download and encode the thing.

~~~
ehsankia
There's no link / web version. You can only export mp4.

------
james_niro
There are two things happening in social media world right now.

First, when it comes to messaging friends and connecting with people most
college kids uses Snapchat. I am in a big college and everyone at my
university uses Snapchat for messaging. I believe that it is smart for
Snapchat to default on camera when opening the app this way it keeps the
distraction away and you can focus on whatever you were planning to do like
reading a message plus it is a good privacy oriented platform.

Second, when it comes to being silly and occupy boredom, kids are using
tiktok. TilTok has a great recommendation algorithm. Sometime, if I don’t pay
attention I can spends hours on the app. TikTok became a safe space for
younger generation, where they don’t need filters and photoshop to be part of
a community.

Here is a great article in WSJ about TikTok

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/help-im-trapped-inside-
tiktok-a...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/help-im-trapped-inside-tiktok-and-i-
cant-get-
out-11579801844?emailToken=8e85c02fb4d9dc4b0e375fa5db89ed4e3hd8TxvvM+aHAqbpVWR903IET2V1TwBFG0f3neQ3UVqAqo6tMVHeSETNnC4ZrlNA0nWu7FD/OB93I2AIJnbNxNMq5WbViEx4BZVo5UrwDpw%3D&reflink=article_copyURL_share)

~~~
ronyfadel
Snapchat = in the US Same as how so many young people in the US don’t have
Whatsapp. AFAICT Instagram is king in Europe (for now).

------
ddmma
TikTok hit the global culture and became part of the youngsters minds. People
evolved from text to video due to mobile and connectivity. When people
identify product/ service name with action is already too late for any other
competition. It’s the social media of 2020.. the new like or retweet

------
hatsunearu
Hope they overtake TikTok, we don't want a totalitarian government poisoning
our children.

~~~
vernie
They fucked up by taking what felt like a decade to launch.

------
gzeus
[https://instagram.com/stories/bytesnews/2229048657293209599?...](https://instagram.com/stories/bytesnews/2229048657293209599?igshid=dqfn3wx7brd3)

------
NiceWayToDoIT
Literally NOTVINE joke coming true :D)))
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGDJkqESz0k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGDJkqESz0k)

------
blackrock
Did I just miss something here?

Out of all names, they chose Byte?

And TikTok is made by ByteDance.

------
treebornfrog
Amazing branding.

Edit: if this thing blows up, I predict Facebook will buy it.

~~~
supermatt
What do you find so amazing about the branding?

~~~
treebornfrog
It's very nostalgic, that's the only way I can put it.

Something that just resonates with me. The UI is very nice too, big and bold.

------
m3kw9
What would you do if founder of Friendster is now starting a Facebook
competitor? It would not work.

------
voska
They named the competitor to Bytedance's TikTok..... Byte?

------
roflchoppa
Finally super short videos, without censorship.

~~~
pjc50
Nobody is going to let teens share uncensored videos; child porn is one of the
few things against which the internet unites.

------
mactyler
This guy is the real deal. Wish him the best.

------
zupreme
So cloning is cool when we Americans do it. Great...

How many times will we reiterate the same core ideas?

Is a new way to share videos, pictures, and text innovation?

We can so so much more.

~~~
haskaalo
I don't think you fully know the whole story about Vine/TikTok/Byte.

------
oliv__
I _love_ this website

------
seibelj
China clones America’s successful tech companies, and now America clones
China’s.

~~~
Gaelan
To be fair, I think TikTok was to some extent a Vine clone.

~~~
samstave
In convinced tiktok is the chinese face recognition DB for the CCP

~~~
jtms
if it’s a Chinese controlled company then company db == government db. They
just passed legislation entitling the gov to access all encryption keys didn’t
they?

~~~
pinkfoot
As did the USA, see the 2018 CLOUD Act.

~~~
jtms
why does there always have to be a deflecting “what about”-ism with literally
everything any one says here?

~~~
pinkfoot
I can speak for anyone else, but for me its becuase double standards are
infinitely worse than what-aboutery.

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kwonkicker
Too little too late

------
throw7
Fun Fact: paywall.

