If you are over 15 and are reading this article, you may not have heard of TikTok, an application that is particularly popular among teenagers. It is among the 50 most downloaded apps in Italy and is estimated to have around 500 million users worldwide, but it should interest you for another reason: it does things that will probably someday make applications that are more familiar to us and that we are already used to. to use, such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And of course, those who have spotted their teenage son making weird moves and lip-synching in front of his smartphone camera are of course interested.
TikTok in a nutshell
TikTok is an application to shoot and share short videos with your smartphone, in portrait orientation as is the case with Stories on Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Facebook (the “Stories” are collections of videos and photos that are automatically deleted after 24 hours). To see the videos of others you do not need to subscribe to the application, just download and start it. You switch from one video to another by scrolling vertically and not horizontally as with the Stories on other apps. You can see videos practically indefinitely, with a logic similar to that of zapping on television: they last a few seconds and the idea is that in the vertigo of the list there is always something interesting, boring or funny.
There are stickers and filters to add to your video, to create particular effects, but above all there is the possibility of inserting a sound track. Between song excerpts, famous movie lines and more, there are hundreds of thousands of sound effects to choose from. The most used are the excerpts of the songs, used to make lip dub, that is to pretend to sing by moving the lips using the voice of the artist.
them: what's your special talent?
me: pic.twitter.com/ViR6xyBIY9
– TikTok (@tiktok_us) January 30, 2019
Posting videos
If you don't want to use TikTok passively just to watch videos, and if you want to publish your own, you need to register as happens with classic social networks . The published videos are collected in your profile and you can of course follow the profiles of others, so as not to miss their latest content.
Comments and “likes”
Under the videos you can leave comments and you can write with other subscribers. Videos can be rated using the classic “likes” heart: the more you receive, the more likely your video is to be featured somewhere.
? ? pic.twitter.com/OWPyPCHl9o
– TikTok (@tiktok_us) January 27, 2019
Replies and duets
More than the classic comments, TikTok encourages the creation of replies in video format, to show your reactions to the content you have just seen. There is also the possibility of creating a “duet”, using a video already published by someone else as a quote to then add your own, perhaps to repeat the same thing done in the original or reinterpret it.
only child vs BIG family #SurvivalOfTheFittest pic.twitter.com/JFILS6wuzP
– TikTok (@tiktok_us) February 13, 2019
Hashtags
Hashtags, which Twitter has tried in every way to make more relevant without ever really succeeding, play a central role within TikTok and are widely used by users. They are used to organize all the contents within the application, to find your way around the most popular ones and to discover new ones. Some hashtags are related to “challenges”: someone takes up a feat, or something they think is like eating a slice of watermelon in the shortest possible time, and uses #challenge to invite others to do the same and better than him . There are thousands of challenges on TikTok, some are overlooked and die in the bud, others become popular and rampant.
There is always something
Just open TikTok the first time to realize that the app will always do everything to entice you to watch videos and more videos, feeding some dependence on the system. The vertical scrolling to switch from one content to another works very well and, as in the Stories, you feel that effect of curiosity that pushes you to see what is next, and after again if the experience has not been satisfactory. It is a road that, with different declinations, all social networks have followed for some time, but on TikTok the brevity of the contents and their strangeness work better than elsewhere.
This belongs in a museum . pic.twitter.com/evJEtSCTpj
– TikTok (@tiktok_us) January 6, 2019
The effectiveness of the system is reinforced by the presence of very zealous algorithms. The app, for example, keeps track of the videos on which you have focused more or with more interactions, customizing the offer of the contents highlighted for each individual user. Even if you do not follow profiles, the “For you” section gradually adapts to your tastes, but without completely conforming, showing completely new and out of context things, which however could work and arouse new interests.
It is not clear to what extent these are choices desired by the app programmers, or simple algorithm problems that always fully understand the tastes of users. The final effect is a mixture of videos of all kinds to be discovered, in a simpler and more immediate way than you can do with Instagram photos or tweets from profiles you don't follow on Twitter.
The ability to have a stream of content immediately without having to “Like” Pages or add a friendship, makes TikTok much more immediate and less demanding than Facebook. And this is partly the success of the application: it is a social network of the disengagement, there are no offensive things and everything flows away very quickly. Nobody seems to take themselves really seriously, even if many are clearly on the hunt for “likes” as happens on other social networks. The preferences, however, are for what you do more than for how you look. TikTok manages to communicate a reassuring general message: expectations are very low and everyone feels encouraged to participate.
Who else loves this guys videos ?! ?? #TikTokRewind pic.twitter.com/OPGXmF8wn7
– Akira? (@DlSAPPOlNTING) December 16, 2018
Instant audience
The fact of ending up in the stream of videos offered to millions of users, even if they don't follow their profile, makes TikTok different from other social networks and simplifies the first steps of new subscribers. Usually when you sign up on Twitter or Instagram you have to build an audience, following people and trusting to be followed in turn. It's a process that takes time, some dedication, and frustrating for some.
On TikTok, followers are secondary: the app invites you to immediately produce videos, take advantage of hashtags, comment on the contents of others and participate in their challenges. Groups are created all the time, then they crumble to merge into others, to the point of leaving you a bit stunned by the experience if you don't pay attention. At times it seems to be in the middle of a gigantic social experiment, the assumptions of which are very simple: let's give millions of people something to easily do and share short videos, and see what will come out of it. That experiment now has hundreds of millions of guinea pigs, who seem to be enjoying themselves and are interested in evolving the thing they ended up in, even though they haven't the faintest idea how.
Where does TikTok come from?
Behind TikTok is not a friendly Silicon Valley startup, but a giant Chinese internet company called ByteDance. The company recently received a valuation of around $ 75 billion and says it mainly specializes in artificial intelligence solutions. The Chinese version of TikTok is called Douyin and has been around since 2016, a year before the international edition was introduced. In November 2017, ByteDance spent about $ 1 billion to acquire musical.ly, an application from a Shanghai-based startup – based in California – designed for US teenagers and then merged with TikTok last year.
Some content is censored on Douyin, as required by the Chinese government which controls everything shared online. The international version has fewer limitations, but as with other apps and services made in China, many wonder about the implications of the success of a software that puts into practice the demands of a government on the censorship of free expression.
ByteDance's most successful product in China is not Douyin, however, but another app called “Toutiao” (literally “titles”), originally born as a news aggregator. The app has undergone several evolutions, now becoming a large container in which you can find news, photographs, videos and content created directly by users. The artificial intelligence systems developed by ByteDance are used to customize the flow of information that each user sees, in a way similar to that of the videos on TikTok. The application is widely used and produces significant revenues thanks to the advertisements that are shown in its spaces.
An example?
In the course of its existence Facebook has made no secret of being very attentive to other social apps, from which it has drawn abundantly inspiration. When the Stories were introduced on Instagram, for example, its executives made no secret of having copied them from Snapchat, claiming that loans of this type are happening all the time in the field of applications. Stories on Instagram negatively impacted Snapchat's growth, preventing different users from moving to its application, being able to find the same functionality on the one they were already subscribed to and knew well.
It is likely that in the coming months some of the concepts applied by TikTok will be imitated by other apps, starting with Instagram. Facebook has some more rigidity, both for how it is organized and for the content that circulates in its News section, and could be less influenced. Twitter continues to be news-focused and would hardly benefit from any news that mimics the functionality of TikTok.
This is a masterpiece. pic.twitter.com/tniGTIOcR6
– TikTok (@tiktok_us) December 14, 2018
In recent years, however, the landscape of social networks has changed enormously, as has the approach of users. Ephemeral contents, such as Stories, are increasingly privileged over permanent ones such as posts on Facebook and tweets on Twitter. On TikTok the contents are permanent, a bit like photos for those who use Instagram in its “traditional” way, but the archives are not at the center of the attention of those who use it. While not having things that disappear on their own after a certain amount of time, TikTok managed to communicate a more casual and casual approach, which apparently works with younger users.
More than anything else, TikTok is an example as regards the care and moderation of its contents. A video-only app, where thousands are uploaded every minute, could quickly become a dodgy place with violent and inappropriate videos, especially for such a young audience. After receiving some criticism in the past, the app managers have significantly increased the number of moderators: there are about 10 thousand, although it is not clear how many of them deal with the Chinese version and how many of the international one. Controversial content is not seen, as we can confirm after having made a use beyond humanly conceivable of TikTok in the editorial office to verify it.
The app also tries to promote positive messages, for example by highlighting hashtags on particular initiatives to empower its users. Among the most common is #nobullying, against violent and oppressive attitudes in schools. Sometimes, however, the highlighted hashtags are exploited to try to promote videos that have nothing to do with that topic, confirming that great organized chaos that is TikTok.
