TikTok clearly solves two problems that fit squarely within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
1. For content consumers: “I’m bored, and want to be entertained with minimal effort.”
2. For content creators: “I’m externally motivated and need the self validation that comes from attention and praise.”
Solutions to these problems have been sold for hundreds of years and trillions of dollars in profit. TikTok is the latest and possibly most efficient iteration on solving them.
What TikTok really solves is mixing a song from its library into your video and applying a cool visual effect.
No one with a youtube account is gonna download a separate video editing app and build a production pipeline at day 1 (plus copyright issues). It’s a stopper that separates viewers from creators. TikTok made creation trivial and that itself created an enormous funnel. It could afford to not even be a “short” video platform, that’s just a coincidence.
> What TikTok really solves is mixing a song from its library into your video and applying a cool visual effect.
That's what Musically solved 10 years ago, but it's not what TikTok is solving today. At this point, that feature is no different than the ability to add stickers to your Instagram post.
...which is not to undersell the achievement of Musically/TikTok. I specifically remember back in 2015, discussing whether such an app would even be a success, and deciding that nobody would ever film themselves karoke'ing to a song... but here we are.
right, and you don't get to any of these problems by "talking to the customer" b/c they'll never just say "I’m bored, and want to be entertained with minimal effort" — or at least, that's kind of obvious
it breaks the framework bc to make a successful company like tiktok, you'd build "obvious" apps like this, and wouldn't really need to ask customers what their needs are
I disagree… sort of. TikTok found a better way to deliver video content. The problem was, video content and its associated social data, sucked. Most of us just didn’t realize it. But TikTok did. And they were right. It’s sort of like how you didn’t realize that horses sucked for transportation until you saw car. A flawed metaphor, but you get my point. I think a distinction here is that video, in the TikTok, is the product. Privacy is not. You aren’t entertained or informed by privacy. It’s like insurance. You only value it when something bad happens. And if your business model is less good entertainment/information, but with some insurance on the side, seems like a very tough pitch.
Now, of course, that points out a flaw in my original post. Very hard to get people to articulate something of which they are unaware.
They also didn't come first. Vine was a very popular platform that seemingly shut down out of the blue (at the height of it's popularity). There was no real replacement for a long time after that. Tiktok first started out as Musically, allowing people to create mainly dance and lipsync videos. Only later they rebranded to Tiktok and pivoted to general purpose video content.
The point is, even tiktok didn't just get right and had to pivot and maybe that is key. So to the op I would say: try your idea but just be very very spontaneous and flexible to change it quickly if it doesn't work.
1. For content consumers: “I’m bored, and want to be entertained with minimal effort.”
2. For content creators: “I’m externally motivated and need the self validation that comes from attention and praise.”
Solutions to these problems have been sold for hundreds of years and trillions of dollars in profit. TikTok is the latest and possibly most efficient iteration on solving them.