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by muzani 2149 days ago
Instagram is about me. It's about how beautiful I am, how much my kids love me, how popular I am, how influential I am. Facebook is about my political beliefs. LinkedIn is about how hardworking and clever I am. Twitter is about my thoughts.

TikTok is about you, the audience. The people posting in TikTok are creators. It doesn't matter if my post is not funny or clumsy or taken with a bad camera. It doesn't matter that I'm ugly. It's about me participating with you. You can interact with my video side by side.

There's a lot of dance stuff but the dancing is just the easy entry. There's cooking videos, science experiments, confessions, inspirational videos, camera tips, art, pranks, and so on.

Their best competitor is YouTube, which does well, but feels a little elitist and doesn't have the little microinteractions. TikTok has mastered 30 second stories. The other social media had recognized that people want brief stories (and even call the feature stories) but they haven't really capitalized on it.
2 comments
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 2147 days ago
Another important differences is that copying and remixing is an integral part of the platform. A dance or a tune can be used by someone and millions might be using either by the end of the day, and it's gone the next.

While I don't care for it myself, I talk about it with my kids and it's fascinating.

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noteanddata 2149 days ago
yeah, Instagram and other social platform/media are still very different from tiktok from product concept. the curious question is, why google or facebook or snapchat are not making another large scale product like that if there is a market for this kind of product (short video)
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muzani 2149 days ago
The product isn't short video. It's making a quick, low friction social connection to a group of people.
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hackermailman 2147 days ago
Social connection through memes. Image memes you have original pic that is passed around, then a million variations. Tiktok is the same, orig very short video then a million variations

There's also not nearly as much censorship, meaning you can have music clips and own remixes unlike youtube where 'this audio was deleted by content owner'. Snapchat only recently let you used 'licensed audio' https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/snapchat-add-songs-mus...

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