Facebook’s dominance of the social space is so complete that even Twitter’s continued survival seems improbable.
After all, Facebook bought its closest competitor, Instagram, in 2012.
Even I began to doubt that a new platform with a new idea would ever gain traction.
It turns out there’s still truth to the trend-spotting adage, “Follow the kids.”
It was the explosive popularity of Snapchat among teens five years ago that pushed the company to 166 daily active users and a $29 billion initial public offering in 2017. Though it has since faded from the top tier of what’s cool, Snapchat has stabilized as a reasonable alternative platform for messaging and sharing content.
Today a new social app called TikTok is spreading like wildfire among teens. If you have a teen in your home, you’re probably well aware of it. But if you have kids and have somehow been spared its particular brand of performative mania, let me be the old man to try and explain it to you.
I also will say, at the outset, that TikTok is also worth a serious look if you’re a marketer or business that relies on the youth market. Earlier this month the NFL became the latest serious brand to join TikTok, and dozens of other big brands and celebrities also have set up shop. At the very least, you should secure your name on the platform, should it eventually become dominant.
What is TikTok?
The nearest comparable app would be the short-lived six-second looping clip app called Vine — though for people over 30 that’s not a very helpful comparison. And TikTok is actually older, born in 2014 as a lip-synching video app called musical.ly. Letting people, young people in particular, make short music videos to popular songs turned out to be a hit, and in fact the musical.ly user base surpassed Snapchat in 2017.
That same year, a similar app out of China decided to push into other markets. Owner ByteDance bought musical.ly, merged them together, and the current juggernaut was born.
Logging into TikTok for the first time, you’ll be flooded with short, looping videos of various antics, from dance routines (many created just for the app) to comedy skits to pets being pets. It’s about as disorienting as you can imagine, and most people who aren’t teenagers don’t stick around long. But give it a little time, and you’ll start to see some of the craft in the craziness: the effort put into making an impact or statement in a few seconds, performing for your likes, follows and comments.
Comments are typically a mixed bag but fortunately can be disabled.
There is, of course, some risque content, some pushing of boundaries and more than a few TMI moments. But as you might expect, that release is part of the appeal. The platform is not a free-for-all and is moderated, some would say too strictly.
What sets TikTok apart technologically is its use of artificial intelligence and its ability to serve up an “infinite feed.” On most social networks your news feed is made up of people you’ve chosen to follow. If you join Twitter or Facebook and have no friends, there’s nothing to see.
TikTok, on the other hand, literally learns pretty quickly what you like and shows you more of it. You might not know a single person on the platform (although you can certainly follow your friends and favorite celebrities) and still never run out of content to watch.
The fascinating result of this algorithm is that you start to feel as if your interests are “trending,” as if TikTok is uniquely populated by your people. My TikTok feed is easily half cat videos. My teen son sees no cats, but lots of Minecraft. My daughter gets a full serving of cooking and crafts. It’s a different experience for everyone.
That sense of belonging definitely reinforces the positive energy of TikTok. You find videos celebrating specific communities, from nurses to Filipinos to car lovers to, yes, people from Hawaii. It’s entirely plausible that for many, TikTok is the most Hawaii of all social media platforms, and after feeling like we’re a demographic afterthought everywhere else, I can totally see the appeal.
Ryan Ozawa is communications director for local tech company Hawaii Information Service, and a lifelong technologist. You can follow him on TikTok at @hawaiigeek.
