[panorama]

I get the temptation to write it off (I don't personally use TikTok daily), but to me this take feels similar to people who used to assume Twitter is just for people reporting what they ate for lunch. That might have been the case at the start but TikTok has _plenty_ of niche content, some vapid, some productive, which frankly depends on the media you engage with.

[ehsankia]

Indeed, every time I see a post on HN/reddit assuming TikTok is just people doing dances and other vapid content, it's almost from people who have never actually used TikTok.

[crvdgc]

As a non-user, I am genuinely curious about what are some concrete examples of productive contents? From my understanding, the only format of communication on TikTok is videos with a short time limit. I'd imagine it is hard to convey much to be considered productive.

[xvector]

> I'd imagine it is hard to convey much to be considered productive.

This is actually one of the most refreshing things about TikTok. Content density. What YouTubers take 10 minutes to do, a competent TikToker gets across in 30 seconds.

The platform itself encourages a maximization of information density.

[crvdgc]

I went through some TikTok accounts that aim to be informational. Even for the basic type of people talking to the camera, the content density is indeed higher than some YouTube counterparts.

The problem I see is that there's an upper limit to the quantity of information even with this higher density. And that's a hard limit on the range of topics that this format can cover.

Furthermore, I don't think this can be solved by simply increase the time limit as well, since people can't maintain the same level of attention for a long period of time. Say the content needs 60s with max density. It usually needs to spread out to 120s with lower density for it to be understood better.

For the informational content I consume on YouTube, in a 10min video, the parts that can be removed are usually 30s of opening and 30s of closing. For the rest, though it has lower density than TikTok, I don't think it's possible to compress that much and the low density is in some sense necessary.

Of course, this is specific to how people use YouTube and TikTok. And though I am unlikely to use TikTok from this experience, I still appreciate your input.

[CapricornNoble]

>>>What YouTubers take 10 minutes to do, a competent TikToker gets across in 30 seconds. The platform itself encourages a maximization of information density.

I'm struggling to comprehend how German artillery tactics in WW2 can be competently covered in 30 seconds: https://youtu.be/3VY10gfnrTQ

[KineticLensman]

> I'd imagine it is hard to convey much to be considered productive.

I have found some great TikTok tutorials on iPhone photo techniques. For example, hold the phone upside down and on the ground, pour water in front of it, and you get an amazing PoV / reflection shot. The clips that demo'd this were all less than 30 seconds long. There are other tutorials on tool use and knots, by way of example, from which I have learned useful things.

These short-form tutorials are a breath of fresh air compared with bloated YouTube equivalents and their tedious intros. And you can save them to your camera roll.

[antoineMoPa]

There are a lot of tech-related accounts. There is also a lot of marketing, ux-design. Some examples :

- @therubberduckiee

- @loewhaley

- @tony.aube

- @cassidoo

- @systems_analyst

There is also urban design tiktok with @mrbarricade.

Let's also be clear that the goal of the app is to entertain and I think it does this really well and cheaply. Then sometimes you learn something that you might use in your work or personal life.

[deckard1]

I went through all those accounts you listed and this is all just aspirational meme garbage you see on IG. I feel like you're gaslighting us right now

[panorama]

I'm not who you replied to, but I find it hard to believe that you went to an account with the username "systems_analyst", who posts videos on networking and cybersecurity in an informative manner, and decided it was "aspirational meme garbage".

On HN, I give people who I disagree with the benefit of the doubt and assume they're always intelligent. But that doesn't extend itself to believing they're always arguing in good faith. I find it unfathomable that a critically thinking person truly believes a social network with close to a billion users is devoid of any useful content. I "feel" like you're trying to be contrarian and edgy for the sake of being so.

I think my earlier Twitter analogy is apt here. Of course you can't expect TikTok to be on par with Coursera. Similarly, you don't go to Twitter for dissertations. These social networks are entertainment first, and their algorithms and restricted formats lend themselves to a certain type of content. But the natural evolution of social networks at scale is that people easily discover new content that is legitimately useful to them, or find a community based on their professional or side interests.

I went to the #softwareengineering hashtag on TikTok and very quickly found a few helpful accounts. You can do this with any hashtag. Frankly, software dev TikTok feels more friendly than HN at a cursory glance.

https://www.tiktok.com/@shanselman

https://www.tiktok.com/@coderintuition

https://www.tiktok.com/@dantechtok

TikTok's audience age skews younger. I'm not saying these profiles will be helpful to you personally, but if I were in high school with a passing interest in development and got exposed to TikTok-style entertainment/info content, I probably would've started coding a lot earlier.

[mkaic]

@americanbaron makes great short films on TikTok!