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TikTok famous: How the app is turning teenagers into celebrities

60 points| laurex | 6 years ago |vox.com | reply

41 comments

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[+] spamizbad|6 years ago|reply
The fact that this app came out of China and not Silicon Valley, when it was halfway there with Vine before killing it, seriously makes me question the long-term sustainability of social/media apps from SV in the future. The era that gave us Youtube and Facebook is likely coming to a close.
[+] momokoko|6 years ago|reply
What I feel is more interesting, is that TikTok did it with aggressive traditional Google and Facebook ads. This is directly at odds with the SV playbook for social media apps which relies mostly on viral and network effects boosted by growth hacks built directly into the product.
[+] segmondy|6 years ago|reply
I won't say so. SV is willing to kill anything that threatens it by acquisition. If TikTok was a US company, SV would have made a nice offer. VCs would have pressed and possibly faced the founders to sell talking about how there's no more room for new players in the social network space. They will point to Snap & Google+ as an example. Then point how instagram was snap for taking the $1Billion. Google, Facebook, Apple all have enough data to see how fast an app is growing and buy/kill it before it becomes too popular.

I think we can still see innovation out of SV, but it will take someone with restraint, and who's not willing to sell out for cash. For a first time founder that's very hard.

[+] NotSammyHagar|6 years ago|reply
You are crazily generalizing off of one event. Sure, this could have been a sv company product. Let's see 10 more things that sv fails with and chinese companies succeed in, then I'll believe it.
[+] pastor_elm|6 years ago|reply
Vine was unprofitable and i'm sure outside of sleazy Chinese data stealing, TikTok is as well.
[+] shriphani|6 years ago|reply
I met a Punjabi gentleman in his 50s watching Tik Tok. Turns out there's a vibrant comedy scene in the Punjabi language on Tik Tok. It is huge in the South Asian community and is attracts a large variety of eyeballs.
[+] jankyxenon|6 years ago|reply
Can confirm. Source: am Punjabi; wonderful stuff, pretty much the only social media I consume.
[+] par|6 years ago|reply
TikTok is definitely ushering in the next wave of social. Admittedly I'm old and therefore I am not on it, but I still find a lot of the videos that get re-posted pretty consumable and entertaining.
[+] zwieback|6 years ago|reply
I wonder how sustainable an app that mostly targets preteens and high schoolers is, though. I realize everyone thinks of the next wave of consumers but will they continue using TikTok? It sounds like a big part of the appeal is that each next wave wants something other than what that the older boring people are using.
[+] dvt|6 years ago|reply
In short, very sustainable[1]. Look at Snap. Growing pains, sure, but it's undeniable that it became a social media staple.

[1] Not TikTok though, see my other comment.

[+] dvt|6 years ago|reply
TikTok has been aggressively advertising on Snap and Insta for years now. It's very obviously a non-sustainable business model. The whole point of viral growth is that you don't need advertising. I'm sure there's going to be a massively profitable "MySpace for gen-Z or Vine 2.0" coming out soon (does anyone want to build it?), but TikTok ain't it.
[+] segmondy|6 years ago|reply
How is it non-sustainable, it's booting up. It's not like they keep paying for every time their users use it. It's already viral, folks are now talking about it. I keep seeing TikTok videos on twitter posted/retweeted by users not ads. Hell, I installed it and I never did install Snapchat.
[+] debt|6 years ago|reply
Maybe unsustainable in the traditional sense, but if they can negotiate contracts with the talent on their platform, that may be a different avenue for profitability.

I mean look at the success of Lil Nas X. Highly successful TikTok talent.

[+] ralphc|6 years ago|reply
Non-sustainable business model or no, it is _the_ thing right now. I found this snippet interesting from the article "When an elderly woman went missing, these four 'junior detectives' sprang into action and saved the day"

"Logan said the group of friends were excited and happy to have found the woman safe.

"We had a party in my tree house eating goldfish and watching TikToks to celebrate," said Makenna."

[+] dba7dba|6 years ago|reply
How much was vox paid for this pr piece, I wonder?

Also I wonder how much bloomberg is paid for posting news related videos using tiktok.

It is a new type of marketing I guess.

[+] BayesStreet|6 years ago|reply
Reminds me of the recent episode of South Park where "journalists" like Vox claim to be for human rights but bend over to get Chinese payouts. Also why does this post say it's 3 hours old when it was posted yesterday?

Reminder that: If you check the AndroidManifest.xml of TikTok app you'll see they are tracking persistent device identifiers coupled with phone #. Then if you uninstall TikTok you'll still have a bunch of their files in shared space that other Chinese apps can pick up were you to install them, presumably so they can track you even if you uninstall the app.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21077216

[+] stevewodil|6 years ago|reply
Tik Tok is incredible at marketing. We've never seen anything quite at this level. Originally they were posting videos all over Reddit but eventually those submissions got blocked. They also paid a bunch of meme channels on YouTube to start posting Tik Tok compilation videos, which reach millions of views.
[+] ganeshkrishnan|6 years ago|reply
Will Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger also post regularly on tiktok. I don't think tiktok needs to do any more marketing. There is a craze among teenagers to get on there
[+] zwieback|6 years ago|reply
Putting in so many pictures of Haley proves that popularity sells, whether it's Vox or TikTok.