[next_xibalba]

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.

[sureglymop]

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.

[yawnxyz]

yeah exactly, no amounts of user research would lead to "people want a platform like tiktok"

[musicale]

With the possible exception of Vine's 200 million users.