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Internet communication, something that not so long ago was considered the future, has long since become the present. Giants like Facebook are making a comeback and viewed with suspicion by many. Instagram is starting to see how the average age of its users is increasing and is starting to see how their desire to increase app usage is having a mental impact on many young people.
However, there is coverage that in 2021 showed it could handle not similar apps, such as Instagram itself, but giants from the past, such as television, and the present, such as Netflix. or YouTube.
East TIC Tac, the first major Chinese online service to make its mark on the planet.
What is TikTok
When the ecosystem of internet-related applications and services started, each had their own defined purpose. This is no longer the case today, and we go to Facebook to download photos of a party or to inquire. We go on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest news, but also to see the latest memes.
However, TikTok, which is currently the seventh most used social app in the world, is clear that its focus is entertainment. Of various kinds, but entertainment. Nothing more.
It is not intended to be a gathering place for friends, or a source of information, or anything more than a place where you can be distracted, laugh and get excited.
TikTok’s approach is clearly inspired by Vine, an app that offered ultra-short videos that ended up being bought by Twitter. And defenestrated, unfortunately.
But that’s the main thing, because the origin of TikTok is in Musical.ly, a platform on which to play famous songs, which became very popular in 2016. In 2018, it became what we now know, although users did not like it at first.
It is currently the only massive alternative to the Meta Emporium (Facebook and Instagram, because WhatsApp has a very different approach).
Why it can compete with Instagram … and Netflix too
Once you know TikTok, you might think that it is a fairly direct alternative to social networks like Facebook or Twitter and, above all, to Instagram.
In fact, Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy the business when he began to see that it would be a tough rival, as he did with Instagram himself or with WhatsApp. The difference is that ByteDance, the developer of TikTok, did not want, which triggered a series of actions by Facebook, before calling itself Meta, to copy the most prominent functions of the Chinese social network, in addition to accusing him of being a danger to democracy.
One of Meta’s (then Facebook) bets on TikTok was Reels, which cloned the idea for short videos in droves, and buried the idea for Instagram TV, which never toured.
But even so, TikTok has managed to position itself above Instagram in something that was never thought possible: to compete with much bigger and more established platforms, such as Netflix or YouTube.
This was made possible thanks to the application can change the usage habits of users, which makes them more interested in watching hundreds of short videos in a row than a movie or a few chapters in a series.
This lack of engagement means that users go to TikTok without feeling like they’ll spend a fixed amount of time there. It can be 5 minutes, maybe an hour, but it is up to them, and they don’t feel guilty if for the moment they are going to do something else.
On the other hand, going viral is affordable, even as a business, as some cases in Europe show. This is particularly striking given that this application does not require the perfection that we see on Instagram, which even makes many users uncomfortable, especially younger ones.
The success of this approach is such that it is currently used longer than YouTube. And it’s not going to stop, especially now that it has even started expanding to other devices, such as smart TVs, one more sign that TikTok doesn’t want to restrict its use on mobiles.
For now, the main limitation is that its users are very young, not having permeated the middle and the third age, like WhatsApp or Facebook did at the time.
A simple and addictive idea that gives you what you want
Essentially, TikTok has established itself as a great entertainment platform because it’s easy to use, just swipe over and over again; It can be used without registration if we don’t want to download any content; there is a lot of content; is free…
But above all, give us what we want.
The recently disclosed TikTok algorithm is very basic but effective. It analyzes which videos we spend the most time in, which ones we like or which we say in, and it gives us more content related to that. Easy and simple
It is true that from time to time he presents us with a different video to see if we are interested in another category, but if we reject it he learns and does not show it anymore, always trying to increase the time in the application.
It is not known how the platform will evolve in the years to come, but it is already appearing in major sports competitions and in TV commercials and it would not be surprising if it becomes a global platform, beyond the age or borders, as WhatsApp has done.
It would be the first Chinese software platform to achieve this goal. And that would be possible, given that in 2021 it managed to overtake Google as the most visited web domain on the planet.
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