TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world right now. It currently sits at #2 on the App Store charts in the US. The app is primarily a place where you can go to watch short and looping videos of people doing anything and everything, from dancing to sharing tip and tricks on how to cook the best fried rice.

The main screen in TikTok is called the “For You” page (FYP) which algorithmically surfaces videos the app thinks you will enjoy most. You can swipe up to go to the next video, or swipe down to see the previous again. If you watched a typical user on TikTok, you would see them staring at their phone while swiping up every 10-30 seconds for a hours at a time. There is such a variety of content on TikTok that any user can find videos and creators they like…but it is the best-in-class algorithm that surfaces these videos that really gives TikTok its edge over the competition.

Both Instagram and Snapchat have tried to clone the exact feature-set of TikTok, however, they have had limited success with their versions. I think the biggest reason for their failures so far is they do not have the creator talent that TikTok has. While both Instagram and Snapchat have larger and more accurate networks of your friends and family, the popularity of TikTok is not driven by that. TikTok’s content comes from celebrities in the same way that movies and shows on Netflix or HBO are driven by the leading actor or actress. The best people in a position to create TikTok-like content are creating that content on TikTok. Additionally, a lot of the content on Instagram Reels is actually just re-posted videos from TikTok. It is as if Netflix was only filled with low quality reposts of tv shows from HBO.

On Instagram and Snapchat you are primarily seeing content from your own network of friends. However, there is no reason to assume that group of people is the most entertaining group of people in the world. Or that they would be the best dancers, or the best chefs. On TikTok, because the content is driven by an engagement algorithm and not your friend circle, you can watch content from the most entertaining creators in the world.

Lastly, this fact has allowed “regular people” who are not usually considered celebrities to create large followings on TikTok, because they are actually one of the best people in the world at creating entertaining content about a certain topic. TikTok has created a middle-class of creators who can make a sizable amount of money by posting videos that millions across the world consume. The other feature that has powered the growth of these creators is remixes. One example of a remix is when a user creates a dance to a song, and then thousands of other users will post their own video doing the same dance to the song. This creates attribution to the original post and helps spread the influence of that user. There are many dancers on TikTok who have created dances to songs that were “remixed” by millions. This also works as a method to drive up the popularity of songs. There are now so-called “TikTok songs” which are songs that gained awareness through users posting dance videos with that song in the background. TikTok even published a list of the most popular songs in 2020:

As the TikTok blog post states:

The below list of the ten fastest songs to reach 1 billion video views reflects the community's enthusiasm for new songs by stars like Drake and Billie Eilish, but some of the year's most viral hits came from unexpected sources. The list includes rap hits from regional stars like Detroit's Sada Baby and Houston's BeatKing, and songs by artists like Popp Hunna and WhoHeem who were virtually unknown before their viral moment. Songs didn't have to be new, or even recently released to cross the billion view threshold: "Say I Yi Yi" (2002) and "Where Is The Love?" (2003) demonstrated how the TikTok community can turn catalog cuts into viral hits.

We can see that TikTok is not only expanding the influence of their most popular creators, but it also acts as a new platform for up and coming artists to post their music in hopes of it blowing up to a catchy dance. If you don’t know any other TikTok users personally, your experience isn’t any worse. This could never happen on a typical social network because you are limited to only seeing what your friends post.

Netflix and YouTube were the first platforms to surface entertainment content from users around the world based off of algorithmically driven engagement, however, TikTok has taken it to a whole new level. Netflix shows are typically 20-60 minutes and movies are usually closer to 2 hours, while YouTube has an average video length of around 12 minutes. However, TikTok videos are always less than a minute. This means that TikTok is getting an order of magnitude more signals to use in their algorithm. More signals mean a better algorithm that can more precisely show you the exact content you will enjoy the most.

TikTok is a new mobile-first hybrid of streaming service and social network. In a sense, TikTok is everything Quibi wasn’t: a mobile-first entertainment network. Instead of taking the Quibi path of hand-selecting Hollywood content like a typical production studio, TikTok outsourced content creation and used algorithmic curation. Instagram was the original mobile-first social network, and TikTok has now become the first mobile-only entertainment network.

If you have not tried TikTok because you don’t think there will be any content you enjoy, I encourage you to give it a try. Additionally, if you enjoyed reading this, Ben Thompson of Stratechery has a great piece on Social Networking 2.0.