
TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube in downloads last month - RobertSmith
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/02/tiktok-surpassed-facebook-instagram-snapchat-youtube-in-downloads-last-month/
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AznHisoka
Maybe it surpassed downloads because almost everyone in the planet already has
FB, YouTube, etc. installed, and not as many has TikTok installed? So I don't
see how this metric is really that impressive.

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askafriend
When it's the strongest signal you have in your business, as an entrepreneur
you've got to sell it. And in self-interest, TechCrunch wants to help sell the
story so they're going to use the strongest signal the business will give them
to validate relevancy.

Those are likely the mechanics at play when the result is a title like that.

Like you're saying, it's not really impressive, but it's probably the most
interesting thing about the business (fortunately or unfortunately).

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acpetrov
I wonder about the rate of reinstallations though. Over a month, some steady
percentage of users is changing phones and reinstalling apps. If a new app is
able to beat the (new installs + %reinstalls) of giant apps, that's
impressive.

If the app stores don't count reinstalls as downloads, then, well, sorry you
wasted your time reading this

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jobigoud
Some phones have these apps preinstalled. I never used Facebook but I can't
fully uninstall it from my Samsung Galaxy phone.

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saagarjha
I _really_ despise TikTok, from the limited experience I’ve had with it
(namely, someone sent me a TikTok video). They do this thing where they
watermark your video with the company’s logo in the corner, but also _make it
vibrate_ , making it impossible to not focus on it instead of the video (oh,
and it moves around between corners to make it harder to remove or ignore). In
my mind, that’s a warning sign saying the company cares more about their brand
being noticed than their user content seen.

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8ytecoder
The logo has the username as well. I assumed it's to prevent people from
copying and taking credit for other people's work. (That said, I do see these
videos with the logo cropped out)

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saagarjha
That said, I still see no reason why there needs to be a company logo or why
the logo needs to vibrate.

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rghp
I assume you're one of the only people in the world bothered by the logo
vibrating.

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sgc
Are you kidding?. Of course that is shit for almost everyone. Animation on a
page is one of the main motivators for adblock.

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rghp
Only it's not a static page, it's a video: everything in it moves.

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saagarjha
Things move in real life too. We’re almost hardwired to look at things that
move in a sudden or erratic way.

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kartan
> TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat & YouTube in downloads last
> month

This is not very relevant. The comparison will make sense in 5 years from now.
If after months and years TikTok still gets more downloads then it's a game
changer. Otherwise to compare them makes no much sense without a lot of
interpretation.

People do not install Facebook each day. They install it when they get a new
phone. But a new app will be installed in all preexisting phones.

This happens all the time. One app goes up in the charts as it becomes a new
thing. Then it goes out of fashion. And in the end, the number of uninstalls
is greater than the number of installs. Then the app disappears from the
charts. But Facebook, Instagram, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, etc. are still
there the next month.

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ArtWomb
I think it's significant in that its a rebrand of a Chinese consumer internet
application for the international market that has succeeded beyond
expectation. Of course it's progeny includes previous short form video apps
Vine, Music.ly, etc. But TikTok's infinite scroll of 15 second,
algorithmically curated, auto play videos has proven addictive. And they can
pretty much deliver any type of content in this user mode: news, episodic,
live. At 100M install base and 100 daily average views. Ad revenue generate
rates could be phenomenal ;)

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baybal2
If of course they don't deliberately cook their numbers – something that even
tier 1 companies in China been caught doing.

I.e. Baidu's custom search pages, they cost brands millions of bucks per year,
but Baidu was still buying buying bot traffic by itself to draw up some
semblance of it being worth it for companies! Imagine Facebook hiring people
to click on its own ads.

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netheril96
I saw people in many Chinese forums react the same way as HN folks here. And
they (or we) became more and more surprised when Tik Tok continued to gain
ground when none of us got it. In the end all it proved is that “we” lost
connect to the common folks.

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CydeWeys
From what I've seen of it, isn't it basically the exact same thing as Vine?

Why the hell did Vine ever shut down anyway? It seemed like it was doing well.

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c3534l
It was popular, but didn't generate revenues. It's not enough for a website to
be popular, you have to figure out how to get people to give you their money.

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romanticComedy
Yep, plenty of flotsam and detritus amid failures to launch. Look at sites
like Friendster. Why did friendster ٭die?

Failure to scale infrastructure in a cost effective way that matched it's
growth curve. Also, Friendster failed to adapt and develop features that
resonated with emergent user activity. Within a year or two, other players
emerged to eat its lunch.

٭ ...and when I say " _die_ ," I mean decay into near total disuse and
irrelevance by the end of 2004.

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dylz
TikTok has some of the worst misleading and bizarre advertisements all over
the internet. I'm kind of curious what their advertising budget is at this
point.

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mikeash
What’s misleading? I’ve seen a metric buttload of their ads on YouTube but I
know basically nothing about it beyond that.

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dylz
Heavy sexualization in ads (for an app targetted 13-17 demographic, not to
mention the amount of predator behaviour in Musically pre-merge/acquisition in
general) vaguely reminiscent of the "play now, my lord" times, fake
X-out/buttons, incessant screaming/volume differences, abuse-esque ads (child
voice begging for help + black eyes, etc)

The ads contain content that would get YouTube uploaders demonetised and
suspended.

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fortyseven
Ever since it popped up on my radar I've had that same associated with shady,
scumbag marketing. I can't believe it's taking off, ffs...

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stevewodil
I think that "taking off" is relative. We don't really know how much they are
spending on ads at the moment to get all these installs, but I can tell you
it's A LOT of money. This is not organic growth, and generally paying your way
to the top doesn't work long-term.

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forkLding
The Chinese internet has adequately introduced a new "proverb" summarizing
Tiktok's popularity: 【南抖音北快手，智障界两泰斗】

Which essentially means: Tiktok in the South, Kuaishou [1] of the North, Two
titans in a world of dumb-asses.

[1] Kuaishou is a major competitor to Tiktok and is popular in Northern China,
Russia and Eastern Europe.

Of note is that Tiktok founder started off with news recommendation app
Toutiao.

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jplayer01
What even _is_ TikTok and why do I keep getting ads for it? And what do these
weird ass ads even mean????

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sebleon
Installs is a vanity metric, the more interesting metric in consumer social is
retention numbers like d30, d60, and beyond. If they're able to keep users
onboard for long periods of time, TikTok becomes a threat to incumbents.

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agumonkey
Yay, another time waster Platform

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chuckgreenman
I'm kind of curious as to why the more established platforms are seeing
multiple millions of downloads a month. Are people uninstalling apps and
reinstalling them frequently?

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dragonwriter
If you have a billion users, and each one of them replaces a device every 10
years, that's 8+ million downloads a month just due to device replacements.

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ravenstine
[https://www.tiktok.com/](https://www.tiktok.com/)

How am I supposed to know why I should install this app based on the landing
page?

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askafriend
Because you're curious what the mysterious app could be.

I bet you totally looked it up and their marketing strategy worked exactly the
way it's supposed to (especially for their younger audience).

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ravenstine
Nah, I didn't, but I imagine others did.

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biglenny
Seems like a fad to me. I wonder if/when Instagram will replicate the lip-
syncing feature. I personally am not attracted to the app at all and find the
videos pretty toe-curling. But I'm curious to see how far it goes.

Another thought - TikTok seems to be really popular with young teens. I wonder
if Douyin (the version for China) appeals to the same age demographic and if
users are doing more with the app than the lip-sync

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oh-kumudo
I guess they are similar, but Douyin in China has much more diverse content,
covering food/skits, or just funny video in general, while US version seems
more heavily focused on dancing/lip-sync.

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lexxed
TikTok there is 2 versions the chinese version is not available in Playstore.
i had to download the apk from their website

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koolhead17
Sounds equivalent to GMV crap/hype to me. I hope this will excite investors
and FOMO takes on. :D

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squaredpants
Damn it Cody Ko!

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sontek
The only reason I know what this app is!

