TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58464745

372 335 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

Something as massive as YouTube can be beaten. This feels like the circle of life, considering every empire that rises eventually falls too. Though I am not saying TikTok is the doom for YouTube since geo politics will play a significant role its future. And there are other metrics by which TikTok hasn’t probably caught up with YouTube yet like the size of the user base, revenue etc.

What seems odd is how TikTok is managing this. YouTube is popular among all demographics, the diversity of content is mind bogglingly high whereas (I presume) TikTok is popular among the crowd who are either going to highschool or in college. Its primary purpose is entertainment, so how did it beat YouTube exactly?

okamiueru2• 5 years ago

Don't they serve very different demographics and/or interests?

I've been assuming TikTok is the equivalent of "what is trending today", where "what" is something related to dance moves, or other stuff I don't find very interesting. (Or, it's not that I find dance moves uninteresting, it's just that it's not something I'd want to spend time consuming). Are my assumptions wrong, and there is genuinely interesting, and more in depth content on TikTok?

Also, the whole thought of a video platform devoted to teenagers filming themselves dance ... is... well, to be honest, a bit creepy. But I suppose this is a concern for just a part of the content if my assumptions are wrong.

Ps: Just to clear, I'm not saying there isn't creative things or something to learn or expand some kind of understanding through TikTok. Just that, surely, there isn't much overlap between YouTube and a platform limited to 15 second video clips? Especially one, that for someone who has never used it, seems mostly limited to teenagers filming themselves dance?

anshumankmr5• 5 years ago

I have never installed TikTok or watched any content on it. I assume it is a spiritual successor to Vine.

ItsMonkk2• 5 years ago

While dance content is the most popular, the system that recommends videos allows a factor of magnitude more niches than other platforms. In no way is TT limited to dance. Within the first day I stopped seeing dance content. If you want to post stuff that would do well here, it would do well on TikTok.

fragmede7• 5 years ago

Is the barrier to entry (installing yet another app on your phone) onerous in some way that I don't see? Otherwise it seems straightforwards enough to install the app for yourself and see what's on there.

There's a ton of content that isn't thirst traps (aka teenagers dancing), but while that's an interesting question to dig in to, if enough people switch mediums (from newspapers to radio to TV to YouTube to Tiktok), there doesn't have to be an overlap for one to largely supplant the next. How's the New York Times doing these days?

blahedo4• 5 years ago

dance moves, or other stuff I don't find very interesting

There are lots of different corners of TikTok, and for good or bad it's generally pretty good at forming some fairly niche communities. I have a couple of primarily dance-oriented creators I follow—none of them teenagers, fwiw—but the most interesting are the ones who use their platform to educate, whether it be about science-y stuff or music or history or whatever; I've learned a lot from following a substantial group of Black creators who've taken the time to talk about their lived experiences. These communities with somewhat deeper content really took off when the platform opened up 60 second videos (I gather that was late in 2020?) and they've mostly gotten even better now that creators (at least some of us?) can make 3-minute videos.

It's all based on what you like and follow, though. Very early on, it's worthwhile to go out-of-band to track down names of a few creators that you can seed your for-you-page with, otherwise you'll get the lowest common denominator stuff. Sometimes someone will "duet" or "stitch" another video and then you're introduced to another creator and can follow them directly; other times the FYP itself will serve up someone you've never seen or heard of but that has content (and presumably like-and-follow patterns) similar to the ones you do follow. And then you can like and/or follow the new person.

I mean, there's thirst traps too. If those were the only videos you liked, then that's what it would show you.

zaik• 5 years ago

It would be nice to see YouTube beaten by a more open platform like PeerTube. TikTok is just another proprietary app run by a for-profit company.

anshumankmr5• 5 years ago

It would be nice but unless some massive VC backs it to market it and help it scale, or content creators become aware about it and jump ship, it won’t make a big dent.

simonh2• 5 years ago

I think they're just different markets. YT is doing fine, revenue is up 30% YOY and all their viewer and channel growth numbers are very healthy.

anshumankmr5• 5 years ago

YT has some knock-off of Stories but I have never used it. But unfortunately a lot of creators I watch (even some guys who explain very involved technical stuff) make videos for it now and label it #shorts which is annoying since I usually watch YouTube on my laptop or iPad.

toshk2• 5 years ago

To be fair, Youtube VS TikTok is mostly the wrong comparison.

Tiktok is mostly competing with the Insta/Facebook I need distraction so I'll let myself be numbed with external impulses as fast as I can get. Most similar was the story feature in Instagram, often also videos, although nobody every compared viewing them with Youtube.

Although Youtube also has it's scroll/impulsive it's not a direct competition. Although you could argue any form of time consumption (online) is competition.

anshumankmr5• 5 years ago

I would not go as far as saying the comparison is wrong. From what I have read about the platform, it is a video sharing platform where teenagers can also insert currently trending music and share the content. There is also a home feed that works automatically by finding the best video suggested by an algorithm. So based on that description, it is fair to compare it to YouTube.

I agree YouTube /Instagram/Snapchat stories feature is closer to the experience of TikTok.

Though I making a guess since I have only read about it and seen some screenshots.

neither_color• 5 years ago

I think they're very different platforms serving completely different content. I see tiktok as instagram/twitter/snapchat's competition rather than youtube's. If you go back several years on youtube(like 10 years back) you'll find a lot more casual low-res videos of people being goofy/interesting without any agenda to build a following. Nowadays youtubers are all "Hey guys thanks for clicking on my clickbait title don't forget to smash that like button and subscribe I know you're here because of the title but I'm going to do a long intro about something else because I really need this to be 10 minutes long." To be fair many of these are great documentary/educational/infotainment/explainer series on Youtube that I won't find anywhere else. Wendover or Real Engineering are more well-known examples but there's a long-tail of niche history and economics accounts I like to follow that formats like tiktok won't serve anytime soon.

fragmede7• 5 years ago

The lowered barrier to entry with TikTok and its algorithm means that someone with a PhD in an extremely esoteric field can do a quick presentation without having to make TikTok their new career. Real Engineering is great, but they didn't randomly fire off one YouTube video and get where they are today.

xnx2• 5 years ago

The amount of commenting by people who have (proudly?) never used Tiktok in this thread is staggering.

vitorgrs• 5 years ago

Tiktok is more popular than just young people. I actually discovered tiktok was a thing because of... my mother, who used it.

The algorithms is insane, and it works for any age.

The age demographic for now is probably because young people tend to download new apps first than old people.

iratewizard2• 5 years ago

Thanks to the gross incompetence of Susan Wojcicki and Google abandoning their old motto, "don't be evil".

tester7562• 5 years ago

"abandoning"?

it's still there.

iratewizard2• 5 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil
formerly

JoshTko• 5 years ago

TikTok has two advantages - first, an order more user data to refine it's feed algorithm and second a format that lowers the bar for content creation which allows for super niche content to be viable. The combination enables a feed that resonates.

ourcat4• 5 years ago

Their recommendation algorithm is reportedly the envy of many other platforms. I heard that was pretty much what was being bid for at the time offers started floating around.

disgruntledphd24• 5 years ago

TikTok always gets a zero or 1 on each video, whereas FB only get interactions for a minority of units. This makes it a lot easier to train better models.

axpy906• 5 years ago

Wonder what comparisons are possible for YT as MySpace and TikTok as Facebook? Seems like history is playing itself out again.

ourcat4• 5 years ago

"YouTube still leads TikTok in overall time spent..."

What's the longest length video that TikTok supports? (I don't use it)

umeshunni2• 5 years ago

15 minutes

ourcat4• 5 years ago

Wow. Thank you. I had no idea about that. I had assumed it would be much, much shorter.

yunusabd• 5 years ago

Latest info I could find was 5 minutes max [1], where did you see 15?

[1] https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktoks-testing-even-l...

blahedo4• 5 years ago

There are three categories, with slightly different capabilities and interfaces for each, capped at 15s, 60s, and 3m. The short ones were originally the only ones, 60s became available about a year ago (?), and 3m only just over the summer (and I'm not sure they're even available to all creators yet; they had a slow rollout).

MathCodeLove3• 5 years ago

I feel like I'm going crazy. Hasn't TikTok been proven malicious in it's excessive user tracking and data theft? Why does everyone I know still use it? Outside of privacy concerns, doesn't the blackbox algorithm make anyone worry? We're building automated echochambers for an entire population. We're giving a Chinese company the ability to control the content consumption, and therefore beliefs and knowledge, of entire countries. The ever growing popularity of tiktok is, to me, extremely concerning.

toshk2• 5 years ago

kids use it

ed25519FUUU2• 5 years ago

There was a man who tried to force TikTok out of the US or out of Chinese control…

quickthrowman• 5 years ago

Let’s be honest about it: the former president was trying to reward Larry Ellison for his support, that’s all it was and that’s why it didn’t happen.

jeromegv• 5 years ago

How is that different than Facebook? We have known for Facebook shady data policies for 10 years, and that has never prevented people from using it, why do you think suddenly people would care more when it comes to TikTok?

ipaddr6• 5 years ago

Facebook wants your data to sell higher priced targeted ads.

Tiktok gives your data to China. I don't know what they are doing with it but they are not using it for better targetted ads. I guess when they request permission for my phone contacts, clipboard content, private photos at least I know they aren't using it for ads.

Alex3917• 5 years ago

Hasn't TikTok been proven malicious in it's excessive user tracking and data theft?

Even if you use the website?

lm28469• 5 years ago

We're giving a Chinese company the ability to control the content consumption, and therefore beliefs and knowledge, of entire countries.

Note that non american feel the same way about google, netflix, amazon &co

ericls2• 5 years ago

Nope

blacktriangle• 5 years ago

And they should.

284335524• 5 years ago

I feel that way about Google, Netflix, and Amazon. I’m an American…

maverwa• 5 years ago

Just a single point, but as a non american, I can say that I do not feel "the same way" exactly. Its close, in that I think, the discussion in the EU on Huaweis network equipment in telco nets, is a little bit overheated and I'd like to see the same requirements to be enacted on, for example, CISCO, whos security track record is ... not that good?

But I still think that 'chinese company owning a majority of internet video traffic' is WAY more scary than 'US company owning a majority of internet traffic'. Maybe thats just bias, maybe not.

But yes, I think there should be more relevant non-US big IT players to add more variety. But for a lot of reasons, the EU, and especially germany, just does not cut it in regard of IT expertise anymore. I am not saying this from a perspective of "disappointed patriotism" or something like that. Its more about having more choice would make thinks more interessting.

But on the other hand: more choice makes thinks like movie streaming less attractive. I do not want to have to sign with Netflix, Amazon, Disney, HBO, Apple TV AND Maxdome.

I guess we still cannot have the cake, and eat it, too.

tomjen32• 5 years ago

As a non american I don't feel the same way. Amazon, Google, etc just want to make money. TikTok is (like all companies in China) an extension of the Chinese state, a state that is currently engaging in genocide.

colesantiago2• 5 years ago

who cares about china, isn't this not the same for US companies? why the constant obsession with china?

this just complete fear mongering, let the kids play on it.

mcclosdl• 5 years ago

We'll see how you feel when China takes over the world and your kids are only allowed to play video games 8pm-9pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday... unless you're Muslim in which case all of you can work in a labor camp with no rights or technology.

boltzmann_• 5 years ago

Sadly, only HN users care about this kind of stuff

skohan2• 5 years ago

The obvious answer is that most people just want to watch funny and entertaining videos, and don't care about some externalities which don't even seem real to them.

lucideer• 5 years ago

Hasn't TikTok been proven malicious in it's excessive user tracking and data theft?

Unless you've read some new news I haven't, not any more than Google (YouTube) or Facebook have. Why is TikTok different?

elliebike• 5 years ago

It's no different to most other social networks that commit mass abuse of user data and track everyone, everywhere.

Being a US-based company doesn't make this any better, just look at Facebook.

The only people who worry are people on HN. Most other people aren't aware of what's going on, or just don't care.

ipaddr6• 5 years ago

And the state department.

Letting that on your phone is allowing your contacts, photos and text messages to be read.

Same goes with facebook. But facebook will try to profit off of your data. Tiktok data goes to China. I don't know what they are doing with it..

MathCodeLove3• 5 years ago

Being a US company specifically doesn't make it better, but being a Chinese company absolutely makes it worse.

I wouldn't be nearly as worried if Tiktok were owned by Italy or Germany or France. But China, with it'a ongoing genocide of Muslims and totalitarian oppression, yeah that is worse than Netflix selling your data to advertisers.

BiteCode_dev2• 5 years ago

As a Frenchmen, Youtube is exactly the same:

- algo is a black box, and uncalibrated youtube makes my eyes bleed;

- own by the biggest spy on the planet, google, known for manipulating information, monopolistic behavior, participation in the worst gov programs (e.g: PRISM);

- impose American censorship rules to the entire world, and makes creators do inane cuts to fit some terrible metrics

Besides, the typical Tik Tok customer doesn't give a damn about those things. They didn't on facebook, insta, whatsapp, or whatever. They don't even know it's an issue, "have nothing to hide", don't care about privacy, power centralization, citizen spying and so on.

So Tik Tok or something else doesn't matter.

treeman79• 5 years ago

Explaining these to the average person makes you seem like a conspiracy nut case. No of some of the same people will go on about the illuminati controlling everything. But you talk specific companies or policies and you get an eye roll.

MathCodeLove3• 5 years ago

I see where you're coming from, but Youtube isn't nearly as opaque as Tiktok. You can actually search for videos on youtube, typically content is longer and has a higher production quality which reduces probability of doom-scrolling. As someone else mentioned, TikTok is intentionally designed to be addictive and gamified, much more so that youtube or facebook.

And, objectively speaking, the US government is far preferable to the CCP. The US has it's issues and has made mistakes in the past, the CCP is still putting Muslims in concentration camps and exercises regular authoritarian controll over it's citizens. Militarily, the US is allied with most EU powers (including France) and generally has good intentions for it's allies. China, on the other hand, finds itself on the outside of most alliances, and considering that even their own people are treated poorly, I can only imagine that their intentions for others are not positive.

American tech companies take your data and sell it to advertisers, I don't like it, but they do. The US government only accesses it if they have a reason to do so and subpoena the specific information needed. The Chinese government? I have no doubt that they're collecting data for much more nefarious purposes. Intelligence indicates that they've been improving their military forces massively in the last several decades. It wouldn't be hard for them to subtly start slipping in propaganda into the tiktok feeds of countries they intend to invade, and then they'll have local-national support.

I think it's easy to look at this and say objectively that it's worse. If Youtube or Facebook were owned by France or Germany I would hold the same belief that tiktok is worse. It's not fear of some mysterious "other", but fear of a proven enemy to freedom and human rights, China.

ajsnigrutin• 5 years ago

Yep, but tiktok is chinese, youtube is american, so by definition tiktok bad, youtube good.

All the "data gathering" mentioned in all the FUD around tiktok in recent years is done by google/facebook too, and noone mentiones it at all.

danlugo92• 5 years ago

and therefore beliefs and knowledge, of entire countries

As opposed to whomever controls Facebook/Google?

The ship has sailed. And with upcoming decentralized web technologies that ship will cross the point of no return.

spaniard89277• 5 years ago

From a non-us perspective it isn't really that different.

Snd_• 5 years ago

As a European: this is extremely funny. America has been doing this for years. Apparently only when it's not America doing these things it becomes a problem?

284335524• 5 years ago

Well, you could certainly see why the situation changes when the service is controlled by an adversarial government. At least the US services are only clandestinely influenced by the US government. TikTok is practically a Trojan horse

terracottage• 5 years ago

Kinda. Many Americans run around with a notion of some kind of noble entrepreneur who provides the bounty of endless choice in consumer goods, even if it's a corporation. The fact that many different brands come from the same factory tends to be overlooked. Americans are also unique in their tolerance for constant advertising where other cultures would consider it gauche and intrusive.

TikTok is imo goddamn scary. It is explicitly set up to hook people with gamification techniques, showering likes on new users so they come back for more. Only the subject matter is often politics, activism and intertribal warfare.

_bdbs• 5 years ago

America is an ally, if not formally then the shared westernism. China is most definitely not.

pilooch• 5 years ago

TikTok algorithm is like a tamgotchi with short memory. The echo chamber is actual much less than on other systems, or at least this is my actual understanding. I've been working on AI and ML for 20+y now, I'm always interested is testing the systems out there from the user side. Overall, I've been surprised by TikTok, as I did find it very enjoyable actually, and easily 'trainable'.

bobobob420• 5 years ago

Why does YouTube not change their algorithim. It is clearly sub tier to tik tok, they have the data and skill set to provide new and entertaining videos but the recommended feed has been so stale and stagnant for a few years, constantly pushing videos you’ve seen or ones you clearly don’t want to watch. How much of tik tok’s success do you think is their algorithim for recommending content. I heard from numerous people how addicting it is and how every video is different. Do you think the short videos give more instant gratification which has a Large effect? I use YouTube shorts and for the most part it is really entertaining

284335524• 5 years ago

I stepped back from a group chat because the fellows in it swore by “Mental Health TikTok,” where therapists give mental health advice. This is concerning to me.

Beyond that, the data collection and the way it mixes young-but-of-age mildly sexual content with underage guys imitating them makes me stay far away. I enjoyed the handsome men in various states of undress but couldn’t find a way to make the app not veer into underage content, no matter how many times I told it what I liked. Disturbing.

wutbrodo7• 5 years ago

I stepped back from a group chat because the fellows in it swore by “Mental Health TikTok,” where therapists give mental health advice. This is concerning to me

What's concerning about this? I don't mean this rhetorically: I'm genuinely curious, as I've heard people say similar things recently.

It seems to me that, like metabolic health, there's a pretty large body of basic mental health advice that's safe and salutary, and that doesn't displace heavy-duty mental Healthcare for those who need it (in the same way that healthy recipe tips don't displace insulin shots).

BoxOfRain• 5 years ago

The depressing reality is that your average person on the street couldn't care less. I've tried bringing it up to friends and family in the least evangelical way I can, and the most common response is that they simply don't care about their privacy; to them the content on the platform is worth dealing with an app that's accused of malicious practices and "so what if some company in China gets my data, I'm not planning on going to China". Talking about things that are well known in the tech industry to people without that background has a nasty habit of making you look like a conspiracy theorist to Johnny Random.

angelzen3• 5 years ago

They may not be going to China, but China is coming over.

ajay-b• 5 years ago

I think the reason people use it is the reason why people still use dating apps. Choice is infinite. Every time you swipe, is a new person, a new video, a new hit of dopamine. An insatiable appetite for something new. It is also power. With the dating apps it’s the power to dismiss someone with a swipe, no need to waste time looking at their profile. In TikTok there are no YouTube ads, and you can swipe quickly past videos that don’t spike interest (dopamine).

DenisM• 5 years ago

Perhaps the fact that a Chinese company has grown so powerful will finally spur the Congress to a break up all digital oligarchs.

aerosmile• 5 years ago

Pretty clear from several comments in this thread that Non-US citizens have a hard time distinguishing the risk-levels of a US-centric vs a China-centric world. Particularly insulting to see the French comments. Ever wondered what Europe would be looking like today if it was China and USSR that ended up defeating the Nazis?

swiley• 5 years ago

Tok Tok is just YouTube but with the opaqueness turned up to 11. Most of the people who use YouTube without worry think Tik Tok is an improvement.

wickoff• 5 years ago

As a person who is hopelessly addicted to refreshing feeds I can say that TikTok is the first app in 10 years that replaced reddit - my previous digital drug of choice. Their algo is just to good. People without rich and fulfilling lives don't stand a chance.

Levitz• 5 years ago

It turns out most people are actually sheeple.

swebs• 5 years ago

Hasn't TikTok been proven malicious in it's excessive user tracking and data theft?

Try watching this video on Youtube without giving Google your passport or credit card info. I found it impossible, even with youtube-dl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIhmoyoOR1s

shadofx• 5 years ago

It would be an issue if Youtube's doing it for their own benefit, but they are just honoring Nintendo's request to not show that content to minors, so Youtube isn't at fault here.

malwarebytess3• 5 years ago

Nope, you're not going crazy. But the thing is every other social media company does the same thing. So railing against tiktok was ineffective because everyone already accepts this. And I was one of the people early on (even before the merger) talking about it.

Even the "china controls it" part isn't persuasive because, I mean, what isn't china influencing these days? And TBH I don't give a shit if it's Chinese or American powers collecting my information, I don't want either of them doing it. And consider that these American corporations influence other nations in the same way China may influence America and they accept it -- of course Americans would accept it too.

My word to people who hate TikTok's privacy invading tech and practices is to lobby to pass a sweeping privacy law or shut up, basically. But that would mean wrecking a huge part of the parasitic tech industry so it's not going to happen.

Money > ethics.

crocodiletears• 5 years ago

Domestic companies like Facebook and Google are already doing all the censorship, manipulation, and tracking I'd expect from the Chinese. Why should I care at this point?

ridaj• 5 years ago

It's not a great metric by itself. There are two ways that "average watch time" can increase: users becoming more engaged, and less-engaged users dropping out of the app. It's a concern if it means that TikTok is becoming a youth-only app, for example.

m12k2• 5 years ago

TikTok seems emblematic of China's overall approach compared to the West - shows up late to the party, but studies all those hard-won lessons to copy and later surpass the most successful Western products. The free market is great at finding the superior product, but it's also messy and wasteful with all those failed attempts - why not just sit it out until a winner starts to emerge, then copy them? China seems to have perfected the art of the fast follower.

simonh2• 5 years ago

Tiktok is very much a product of the 'free market' segment in China. The government does have a minority ownership stake in it now, but that's very recent and they played no role in it's founding by Zhang Yiming, a programmer and serial app and online service founder.

disgruntledphd24• 5 years ago

Yeah, my understanding is that the recommendation engine was already developed for a news app popular in India, and that they grafted this onto Musical.ly (the acquisition which has now become TikTok).

Also, they spent many, many millions on ads to get the app everywhere.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

no different than SV itself. How many Clubhouse clones did we have exactly, not to mention just about every established giant suddenly coming up with 'spaces' and 'stage channels'?

That's always been the game, inside and outside of countries.

jeffbee• 5 years ago

Exactly what malware do people install to get on "App Annie" panel? Is it the "Phone Guardian VPN: Safe Wifi" garbage I see in the Play Store? People really will install anything. Perhaps the conclusion should be changed to "Clueless dupes who install spyware also more likely to prefer TikTok".

game_the0ry• 5 years ago

A couple of years ago, I noticed the youtube recommendations that would get were a lot less interesting, though still relevant to me somehow. At some point I started seeing a lot more "mainstream" content, especially after media companies figured out that they needed to have a youtube presence in order to stay relevant.

So I wonder if the algorithm the switched to had something to do with them potentially losing attention from users.

I can't speak to tik tok, never used it, never will.

jpomykala• 5 years ago

I feel the same. Recommendations are as simple on youtube as “get top 10 videos in your country”

finfinfin2• 5 years ago

Every TikTok user I know tells me that the primary reason they use it is the algorithm. Apparently it’s way ahead of YouTube. Anecdotally I am in the same boat as you—ended up removing the YouTube suggestion sidebar with an adblocker due to its increasingly poor quality.

_fat_santa• 5 years ago

One anecdote that I heard about the TikTok algo is that it favors new creators with <5k subscribers and actively pushes that content to new users. This is opposed to how Youtube does it, where more established creators are pushed over news ones.

I feel like this is what really helps TikTok always have fresh content. If you want to become a YouTuber, the path to having a good following can be years of grind. With TikTok, there is a good shot your first video might just propel you to stardom. Thus more people are inclined to create content for TikTok. It creates a feedback loop

lambdaba• 5 years ago

I wish someone at YouTube could explain, but the recommendation algo is nothing like what it used to be. Every refresh would bring a gem, now it's mostly the same videos, often from the same channel if I happened to watch a few in a row... Very odd.

fumblebee• 5 years ago

I also feel this way. In the past I was completely satisfied with the recommended content.

I now find it over-calibrates to recommend based on recently watched videos, whether the same channel or the same style.

For example, I watched a video the other day, something like "Boris Johnson pronouncing the word _____". Next thing I know, my recommendations are flooded with similar videos that I don't really want to spend my time on.

This deters me from watching videos that come up that I'm mildly curious in watching, but don't really want to watch more of.

schmorptron• 5 years ago

I noticed this as well. Good thing though, so I don't waste as much time on there.

Ekaros2• 5 years ago

It feels like I keep seeing same videos recommended over and over again. And it is not like Youtube does not know that I have watched majority of the length...

6510• 5 years ago

It looks like it uses only a hand full of recently watched videos.

throwaway675309• 5 years ago

This is exactly my experience, the absolute worst is when it clearly recommends videos that I have already watched, as if it thinks I've forgotten and somehow won't notice since apparently I'm the guy from Momento.

spacechild1• 5 years ago

yes, Youtube's recommendation algorithm got very bad. The front page always shows more or less the same videos - many of which I have already watched...

crateless• 5 years ago

I feel like some AI has decided that this video is "good for you". I have some videos on my feed for weeks on end. Now some videos I have already seen are reappearing without the red bar to signify that I have already watched them.

Something definitely stinks with the algo on YT currently. At least for me

shadycuz• 5 years ago

Same experience for me the last couple of weeks.

goohle• 5 years ago

IMHO, we should be able to select or tune algo on YT, FB, Goo, etc. to serve us content. One algo is not enough for everybody.

bavell• 5 years ago

Exact same here, frustrates me to no end. They conveniently forget I've already watched some videos and they are shown as unwatched when I clearly remember watching them. Then others which DO show the red bar on the bottom indicating I've watched it, yet they still recommend it to me?!? Sometimes I have DOZENS of these recommendations in my feed. Lately it's been bad enough for me to really consider ditching YT for good.

m12k2• 5 years ago

Veritasium did a video on this recently [1] where he talks about how YouTube saw falling engagement when only showing users their subscribed channels, so they started recommending more non-subscribed content a couple years ago (he talks about this around the 2-3 minute mark in the video).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

SilverRed5• 5 years ago

I feel like the subscription system takes too much manual upkeep that the average user is not willing to do. If I look at my subscriptions list there is stuff I haven't paid attention to for 5+ years because its too much effort to bulk unsubscribe. But the youtube front page picks up on this and just never shows me any of it.

The algorithm does a decent job of showing the stuff I have been interested in recently over just a simple mix of my subscriptions.

foofoo4u2• 5 years ago

I wish someone could make a YouTube 2011 clone. Maybe call it YouTube classic — of course this would be a trademark infringement, so it would have to be named something else. But seriously, if I can get YouTube 2011 back with its human curated categories and recommended videos sidebar that is based on the video that is currently being watched, then I would be so happy!

foofoo4u2• 5 years ago

I think I found today what I am looking for. https://utreon.com/ looks to be a close contender to what I seek.

behnamoh• 5 years ago

Well, who would have thought it would only take a short period of time until tt overtakes yt.

tarkin23• 5 years ago

This is a hit for US cultural dominance and influence.

Americans and Brits, at least in average watch time, are now consuming media ultimately controlled by the Chinese government.

And the previous election was influenced by a foreign government using American social media networks to influence, not to mention influencing the president-elect directly.

Either America's own social networks are used against them or social networks controlled by other countries are gaining dominance.

It seems nothing other than a decline in American influence in the world. And it comes from other countries outperforming the Americans.

Whether America reacts to this or ignores it through the arrogance of the current greatest will define American power in the world for generations.

nova220332• 5 years ago

This is a bit of hit for US cultural dominance and influence.

How so? Almost everything I watch on tiktok is made by American content creators..Is TikTok proper even available to Chinese residents?

disgruntledphd24• 5 years ago

Nope, there's a different app for China, called Douyin I believe.

tarkin23• 5 years ago

And is ultimately controlled by the Chinese government

im3w1l• 5 years ago

Let's say one American says "China good" another American says "China bad". TikTok can make sure that former gets more views.

webmobdev3• 5 years ago

It's all about controlling the distribution of the media. The media content doesn't matter if it doesn't reach the audience at all.

simiones3• 5 years ago

And the previous election was heavily influenced by a foreign government using American social media networks to influence.

Heavily influenced is a massive overstatement. Russia spent less money on US election influence than most individual mega-churches.

tarkin23• 5 years ago

You’ve found those figures from the transparent and independent Russian statistics department giving the figures in roubles?

slacka• 5 years ago

Russia spent less money [Citation needed]

You have no idea how much money they spent. What we do know from sworn testimony is that they reached 126 million users through Facebook alone [1] We also know they funneled millions into NRA to influence our elections with dark money.[2] They also had an army of social media influencers working at the IRA with a $1.25 million monthly budget. [3] And, what is the value of the influence from their state sponsored hackers that stole data and leaked through WikiLeaks? [4] No megachurch can do that.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-googl...

[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/the-nra-spent-dollar...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troll-farm-spent-mil...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

RobLach2• 5 years ago

Even on TikTok American culture dominantly permeates worldwide. Chinese TikTok is a bit more moated.

dredmorbius2• 5 years ago

Production and selection are distinct acts.

Selection is control.

curiousllama• 5 years ago

Spotify and Pandora dominated music streaming for years, while based in Europe. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t say they were indicative of a decline in American influence.

Other countries’ companies can succeed whiteout diminishing America. Even China’s.

mastazi• 5 years ago

Tangentially related, I wish Pandora was still a thing, I used to love it. Currently pandora.com redirects to a 404 page when viewed from outside the US [1]

[1] https://help.pandora.com/s/login/?language=en_US&startURL=%2...

sjg0072• 5 years ago

I thought Pandora started out of Oakland.

justicezyx3• 5 years ago

Americans and Brits, at least in average watch time, are now consuming media ultimately controlled by the Chinese government.

That's a good thing, they will learn quickly why mass media monopoly is bad, when they now have the fear that drive them to actually look at the giant monsters...

dredmorbius2• 5 years ago

The unfortunate thing is that monopoly often comes with control.

In the face of an overwhelming US monopoly of popular entertainment --- cinema, television, music, comics, and books --- the rest of the world ... had relatively little power. Yes, there are localised (and often government-supported / encouraged / incentivised) instances of each. But it was US pop culture that defined the direction and movement from the 1950s onward.

(For the pedants, 1) I love you, you're my third favourite people, except on the second Thursday of the month, and 2) "defined" != "there were no other influences.)

JohnJamesRambo• 5 years ago

15 seconds is the attention span teachers are going to have to compete with and try to teach. YouTube wasn’t mindless and short enough.

ericls2• 5 years ago

It’s the new drug

CapriciousCptl• 5 years ago

Note that this is watch time *per active user* lest anyone interprets the title as TikTok having more total active user-time.

nova220332• 5 years ago

However, YouTube retains the top spot for overall time spent - not per user - as it has many more users overall.

Burying the lede here BBC...

blondin• 5 years ago

youtube is my main streaming platform, but i have come to understand the appeal of tiktok. most of the things that are inherent to the tiktok platform, i have to manually do while using youtube.

a couple of examples are manually ignoring click-baits, overly long videos and explanations, multiple parts videos (some are genuine, but most are bad-intentioned), creators and channels i don't care about, etc.

buryat• 5 years ago

TikTok will surpass both Youtube/Instagram in terms of videos watched, tiktok will also change the way we consume content and how we interact with it. They also came further in solving comments to videos unlike Youtube where comments section is a toxic wasteland.

DalasNoin• 5 years ago

The headline is a bit misleading

in the article: "average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok... However, YouTube retains the top spot for overall time spent - not per user - as it has many more users overall."

The average TikTok user spents more time, which is still interesting. Maybe kids just have more time on their hands.

ajkdhcb2• 5 years ago

I've also spent an unholy amount of time on youtube but never installed the app. Why watch videos on my phone...

nkotov• 5 years ago

I believe it. Nowadays, I watch perhaps 1-2 videos a day on Youtube. The addictive endless scrolling of content on Tiktok means I'm spending on average an hour a day.

the_third_wave• 5 years ago

Sounds like it is time to add TikTok to you blocklist and get back an hour a day. Add the following to whatever filter/blocklist you use and rejoice in all that regained freedom:

   # TikTok
   abtest-va-tiktok.byteoversea.com
   api16-core-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api16-core-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api16-core-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api16-core-va.tiktokv.com
   api16-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api16-normal-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api16-va.tiktokv.com
   api19-core-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api19-core-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api19-core-va.tiktokv.com
   api19-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com
   api19-normal-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com
   api19-va.tiktokv.com
   api21-core-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api21-h2-eagle.tiktokv.com
   api21-h2.tiktokv.com
   api21-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com
   api21-va.tiktokv.com
   api22-core-c-alisg.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                              
   api22-core-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                           
   api22-core-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                           
   api22-normal-c-alisg.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                            
   api22-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                         
   api22-normal-c-useast2a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                         
   api30-h2-eagle.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                  
   api30-h2.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                        
   api-h2-eagle.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                    
   api-h2.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   api-t2.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   api.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                             
   api-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   dm16-alisg.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                      
   dm16-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                   
   frontier-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                     
   gecko16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                       
   i.byteoversea.com                                                                                                                                           
   ichannel.musical.ly                                                                                                                                         
   ichannel-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                     
   imapi-16.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                        
   imapi-mu.isnssdk.com                                                                                                                                        
   im-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                           
   log16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                         
   log.byteoversea.com                                                                                                                                         
   log-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   mon.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                             
   mon-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                          
   muscdn.com                                                                                                                                                  
   musical.ly                                                                                                                                                  
   p16-tiktokcdn-com.akamaized.net                                                                                                                             
   p16-tiktok-sg.ibyteimg.com                                                                                                                                  
   p16-tiktok-va.ibyteimg.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-cmaf-f16-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                              
   pull-cmaf-f16.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                 
   pull-cmaf-f5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-f5-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                    
   pull-f5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                       
   pull-flv-f11-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   pull-flv-f11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-flv-f1-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                
   pull-flv-f1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-flv-l11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-flv-l1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-f11-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   pull-hls-f11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-hls-f1-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                
   pull-hls-f1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-f5-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                
   pull-hls-f5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-l11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-hls-l1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-q5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-hls-w5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                   
   pull-q5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                       
   pull-rtmp-f11-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                              
   pull-rtmp-f11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                 
   pull-rtmp-f1-ab.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   pull-rtmp-f1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-rtmp-l11.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                 
   pull-rtmp-l1.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                  
   pull-w5.tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                       
   tiktokcdn.com                                                                                                                                               
   tiktokcdn.com.c.worldfcdn.com                                                                                                                               
   tiktokcdn.com.wsdvs.com                                                                                                                                     
   tiktokcdn.liveplay.myqcloud.com                                                                                                                             
   tiktok.com                                                                                                                                                  
   tiktok.com.c.footprint.net                                                                                                                                  
   tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                                 
   webcast16-normal-c-useast1a.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                     
   xlog-va.tiktokv.com                                                                                                                                         
   # /TikTok

If your filter/blocker supports partial DNS matching or regexp matching that list can be shortened radically:

   # TikTok
   (\.|^)tiktok\.com$
   (\.|^)tiktokcdn\.com$
   (\.|^)tiktokv\.com$
   muscdn.com                                                                                                                                                  
   musical.ly                                                           
   # /TikTok

theshrike793• 5 years ago

Yea, the Youtube algorithm is the "pick me girl" of algorithms.

I watched one video by a creator I already follow about their solar panel installation and water-catcher garden irrigation.

What do I get in my recommendations? Dozens and dozens of videos from completely random channels about solar panel installation and gardening.

I very rarely find new creators on YouTube, who produce consistent high quality content. I follow a handful of channels and even from them I lookat 20-40% of their videos.

TikTok on the other hand I swore I'd never use. Then came Covid19 and lockdowns. I reached the end of HN, Reddit and Youtube, so I installed it.

The Algorthm is fucking amazing. Dunno how they do it, but 80-90% of stuff it shows me I end up watching (it is 10secs to 3 mins so the investment isn't that huge =) ).

I've ended up following, among others, an opthalmologist who does sketches about hospital stuff, to mechanics who show the most f'd up cars they get to service, to farrier and sheep shearing videos to a guy who does comedy about weird animal facts.

I'd never actually go search anything like that on purpose, but I actually kinda found out I enjoy looking at. It's a good way to space out for 30 minutes and relax. Most TikTok videos get to the point before a stereotypical YouTuber has gone through their intro and sponsor segments :)

jcun4128• 5 years ago

farrier

There is something weirdly mesmerizing about that. watching them scrape away the stuff from the hoof like it's butter...

tempest_• 5 years ago

It is pretty obvious why it is better though.

It is getting more input and it is getting faster input so it can course correct quicker and more aggressively.

The youtube algorithm wants to optimize for time on the site, and the creators try and have 10 minute videos it seems.

In that time you can consume 60 tiktok videos at 10s each and skipping the ones you dont want and watching the ones you do.

Since 10s is such a small investment they can throw random videos at you and it is pretty low cost.

cloverich• 5 years ago

i’ve watched a lot of youtube this year. every day, and i rarely consume any other media at all. Its overtuned to locking you in and i generally agree with OP. I was watching a lot of guitar stuff and at one point that’s literally all it would show me, despite having other interests. i think i appreciated it was a bit lacking when i realized i was regularly clicking into my subscriptions and searching (manually) for new stuff they or related channels may have uploaded — and finding many interesting videos after wards.

Its a hard problem and perhaps im an exception, but if you are searching for new stuff, and finding amd watching it, that’s a miss by the algorithm. Especially if that becomes the main thing you do.

markdown• 5 years ago

youtube algorithm wants to optimize for time on the site, and the creators try and have 10 minute videos it seems.

I can't stand that. Every video I watch these days is 50% filler just to make that 10mins. I'm forced to watch everything at 2x speed.

randycupertino2• 5 years ago

I've ended up following, among others, an opthalmologist who does sketches about hospital stuff, to mechanics who show the most f'd up cars they get to service, to farrier and sheep shearing videos to a guy who does comedy about weird animal facts.

I bet some of the uptick in quality of content on tiktok vs youtube is based on the length of videos. If they only have three minutes, all the interesting things will be shoehorned into the available time. Whereas youtube creators are incentivized by the payment structure to lengthen their content to increase their adshare pay so they extend their content to 10 minutes + leading to a lot of filler and "heyyyyy guys let me tell you about my day blah blah blah before we jump into the meat and potatoes" etc.

hirako20003• 5 years ago

It's exactly where the issue is. It's no mistake, product management at Google isn't dumb.. here is how it works.

YouTube, for years even post acquisition made no money, kept bleeding to aquire users. At one point a revenue stream is implemented, which must keep growing to recoup the large investments. Not to mention, pure greed.

The algorithm isn't designed to promote quality content to enhance the user experience and love for the product. It's designed to keep users engaged, while allowing for as much ads time possible. So, the 10 or or 16 mins length was identified as sweet spots to allow for at least one ad placement without loosing engagement. Click bait videos aren't demoted, they work. They keep users engaged as they get promoted to watch yet another video, until brain saturation. They maximised profit, they didn't strike the right balance, perhaps too naive to imagine competition could steal from their market share.

Here we have tiktok, knowing very well they would need to be order of magnitude better to gain traction, at least where the market was already taken up by YouTube. They created an app making it easier and faster to push well cut content, with better tech, better suited UI and overall UX proven to be attracting younger audiences who tend to make trends with their creativity.

Take a good look at the YouTube app, despite the few visual improvements it feels like a decade old library system with auto play, ported to mobile phones. Look at tiktok, it's mobile first, it's fluid and design for touch interaction, the social features are right there, not outside the video in the form of two thumbs button and a thread of text blobs.

Google clearly don't understand or refuses to understand trends. They build minimalist systems , boring to look at but that perform very well, and it is now capitalist greed that set the direction of the company, the bottom line is to squeeze more and more money before the competitions finishes them. They got a few years to go on like that.

webmobdev3• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's very irritating, and one of the first thing I do when watching a Youtube video is to increase the Playback speed to 1.5x or 2x.

hnick• 5 years ago

YouTube creators create a new channel for one or two videos or avoid content entirely because they're terrified the algorithm will ruin the good thing they have going if they branch out into a new topic. They do it once and see the hit and never do it again.

SilverRed5• 5 years ago

I saw so much promotion of the tiktok algorithm on HN so I decided to check it out. For the first hour I was laughing at almost every video. The app very quickly optimized to show me funny videos from people like me. And then after a few times using the app, I quickly became bored. I don't want to see endless funny videos, I want to watch some longer informative videos and I couldn't see how to make the app do that.

When I go on youtube it shows me 10-20 minute science and engineering videos which I can put on and sit on the couch watching. This provides lasting value for me because I never get bored of these like I do with 20 second comedy videos.

Firebrand• 5 years ago

I thought about starting my own TikTok page dedicated to programming so I recorded one about why I still prefer C++ over Rust. While I got decent views for the subject matter, I got roasted by 12-year-olds in the comments section. The top one implied the real reason I preferred C++ was because I’m a boomer, and it was apparently written by someone who likes to upload Roblox music videos. My page has since been made private.

I can take toxic Reddit, HN, and even Twitter comments, and while I found the whole situation hilarious there’s something frightening about opening my whole identity for hordes of anonymous people to judge. There’s a power imbalance that doesn’t seem to bother a subset of Gen Z or the general population who continue uploading content there.

bane• 5 years ago

I can't wait for Google to make their own knock-off, do it in 4 different ways, kill them all off, do it another 3 times at the same time, and then kill those off too.

In the meanwhile they'll have permanently degraded some part of their core service offerings chasing this, maybe putting 10 second videos in place of every street view shot in google maps, or making search favor short video content or some nonsense.

fma• 5 years ago

Seems to be misunderstanding of TikTok and their algorithms. WSJ did an interesting experiment where they programmed a bot to do take interest in certain videos. the tldr is that it spirals till you get more concentrated, extreme in the type of content. i.e they searched for depressing videos and they get more and more depressing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-video-investig...

Where Facebook has a weakpoint is that the content they server you is rather limited. It's a newsfeed of your friends, your friends friends (maybe) and the groups you've joined. Maybe they'll recommend something for you. But most of the time, it's stuff you've more or less opted into.

TikTok on the other hand - has at its disposal videos made by anyone, at anytime in the history of its app. That's a lot of content. I can be on Facebook and be done scrolling in 15 minutes. Same with Instagram, Twitter. TikTok, because it has essentially an infinite amount of assets it can serve...you're there forever, watching short snippets of videos to get a dopamine hit.

Not comparable to other social media, IMHO...more dangerous, regardless of which country owns it.

dirtyid• 5 years ago

Overton window friendly mainstream content shaped by PRC censorship is popular because no one likes running across divisive / distressing content that seems to be endgame of western attention merchant approach. Incidentally western platforms follow suit and starts cracking down on undesirables. Going to be interesting once TikTok rolls out massively profitable store fronts / shopping layer comparable to DouYin. Maybe tiktok philosphy will prove that serenity sells more than drama. Censored, curated speech is more marketable to unrestricted free speech.

stiltzkin• 5 years ago

Seems many here are not TikTok users (and some never will) but besides algo TikTok video editing with music and app UX has made people so easy to jump on uploading and recording video from a smartphone, and making this toxic culture of attention from the young audience on making TikTok videos (just look for the cringe reactions of people recording TikTok users making videos).

roody15• 5 years ago

China’s rise continues.

csours2• 5 years ago

TikTok feels so incredibly fake. I know that a lot of that same fake content is available on YouTube, but on YouTube, I can subscribe to creators that do real things or offer substantial and interesting critiques. TikTok and Facebook video feel like broadcast TV - highly over-dramatized and over-hyped. Again, I know the same is available on YT, but I can also use it my way.

malwarebytess3• 5 years ago

It really isn't. I get only normal people on my tiktok, but I also only follow normal people and tend to "not interested" all checkmarked accounts when they show up.

csours2• 5 years ago

Hmm maybe it's because I don't have an account. I guess it's the default feed syndrome.

fragmede7• 5 years ago

Interesting. My FYP is all weirdos. And I like it that way!

trident5000• 5 years ago

This is why Im actually disappointed by the headline. Affirms people would rather watch a mostly degenerate freak show and blatant materialism than maybe learn something or view something reasonable. And its mostly kids ingesting this. Can you tweak your account to view normal content on tiktok...sure maybe? But thats not what its known for or why its popular. Its to feed you the most extreme content possible and keep your eyes there.

sluggosaurus2• 5 years ago

Fake, refined, optimized, or over-produced.. it's all the same thing really.

With television, there are[were] a limited number of channels. Airtime was a scarce resource, and making a TV show cost money so the companies funding it wanted to make sure they got the best bang for their buck. So they had lots of experts tweaking every show to make sure it was juuust right. Little if anything was truly off-the-cusp. Seemingly impromptu conversations on talk shows are scripted and rehearsed. Too much money on the line for anything more casual. When less money is on the line, fewer people are involved and everything can be a lot more casual. Public access television is cruder but feels more authentic. Low budget art films can experiment more than big budget movies. The production of MST3K was casual and crude when it was on public access, but became serious business when they moved to Comedy Central.

A similar dynamic is in play on youtube. When a channel is just some rando uploading videos with little investment and little expectation of financial return, the content is generally cruder and quirkier. When a channel is run by a major corporation with lots of money on the line, lots of people involved in it, and high expectations for the reception, then everything is taken more seriously. Professional cameras, professional lighting, professional editing. It feels more like television because it is more like television.

This same overproduced aesthetic doesn't only come from corporations though; I think the dynamic is in play whenever the content producer has high expectations or aspirations. An individual creator working alone who has aspirations of becoming an "influencer" will put more effort into their content than somebody who has no expectations or aspirations for their content. Their content will become overproduced as a consequence of their lofty aspirations. Maybe tiktok inspires or nurtures these lofty aspirations more than youtube did in the early years.

seph-reed• 5 years ago

I'm glad someone else feels it.

I gave it a shot, and once I got the algorithm to recognize me... it was addictive, but fake as fuck. Nothing really felt like it had love in it. And as much as I tried to push the algorithm towards educational content that actually taught me something new, it could only really show me silly "life hacks" that were clever, but I'll probably never use.

RobLach2• 5 years ago

I feel the exact opposite.

ng123• 5 years ago

Can someone explain to me what happened to Vine? I feel like it beat TikTok to the punch by ~8 years before it was bought and then unceremoniously killed by Twitter. Was that the first example of US innovation being suffocated by the big tech oligopoly?

rockinghigh• 5 years ago

Vine started in 2013 and uploads were shut down in 2016; the same year TikTok launched.

barbecue_sauce• 5 years ago

I think they're asking why.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

I don't think Twitter could afford to lose money with Vines for very long.

The CCP can afford to lose money with TikTok for a long time. Straight from the propaganda budget really.

starik362• 5 years ago

I have yet to see a single CCP propaganda video on TikTok. What exactly are you seeing?

whoevercares• 5 years ago

Can afford to lose money for a long time — IIRC this is called “long term planning” …

sluggosaurus2• 5 years ago

Mismanagement by @Jack.

donio• 5 years ago

Most of the decline happened under Costolo thoguh. Dorsey finished the job.

m348e912• 5 years ago

Vine's an example of the beginning of great idea that wasn't taken to its full potential. There are significant key differences between vine and tiktok. There are three that come to mind.

Tiktok expanded allowed uploaded video duration up to 3 minutes. The For You Page algorithm (which drives the content you see in the feed) is scarily impressive in how it can match the viewer with content they would most want to see. Lastly, and probably most importantly (in my opinion) Tiktok fosters a home for a vast number of entertaining and informative content creators that give them an edge. Vine mostly went for entertainment in quick six second bursts.

fragmede7• 5 years ago

TikTok (or at least my experience with it) is largely focused on 15-second clips, so I'm not sure duration differences are the significant ones. It seems the algorithm's ability to surface engaging content on a per-user basis is more important than anything else.

ng123• 5 years ago

Tiktok fosters a home for a vast number of entertaining and informative content creators that give them an edge

Vine did this too which is a big part of why it's so surprising to me: Vine didn't just have the tech but they had the community. You can still find Vine compilations on YouTube with millions of views that capture the vibrant set of content creators that Vine once had.

Honestly the only real difference between Vine and TikTok in my mind is that Vine was more focused on comedy while TikTok is more focused on music. Otherwise the two services were pretty much identical.

freediver18• 5 years ago

I always wondered how it got away with using copyrighted music... that was the wow factor for me.

nyolfen• 5 years ago

you're leaving out algorithmic discovery and promotion, widely considered tiktok's secret sauce

jollybean• 5 years ago

This is very good.

I would add: the world was not ready for Vine.

The amount of content, the type of it, and the number of people out there willing to make goofy content - I mean young and old alike ... is amazing.

The number of people with cellphones and decent cameras recording 'everything' means we now have all sorts of vidoes of 'guy fishing and whale breaches' or literal lighting strikes etc..

And the normalization of content creation, of likes, of views, the possibility of making money from it etc..

Basically the tools, cultural norms, media and social systems - all reached a critical mass some time after Vine.

If Vine were to have held on, evolved along the lines you indicated, they might have beak TikTok to it.

Oh - and one last point: TikTok started with cute dancing girls among teens. That content category is a great place to start, break through, and get a critical mass going before breaking into parrots swearing, cute babies, and funny challenges.

skohan2• 5 years ago

You forgot to mention that TikTok enables the use of high quality copywrited music in their videos.

aqrre• 5 years ago

Was that the first example of US innovation being suffocated by the big tech oligopoly?

there's countless examples

zz865• 5 years ago

Does TikTok have any ads? I'm not sure how they can survive.

bamboozled• 5 years ago

It's funded by the party comrade.

No, they have in-app purchases?

Sparkle-san• 5 years ago

Yes. From my experience, they gradually phased them in for me as I started using it. Now, more often than not, the first video is an ad.

fragmede7• 5 years ago

There's ads. Upon opening the app, I get one to apply to work at Chick-fil-A. After scrolling a number of videos, I got an for Givingli. No idea how much/little that pays the bandwidth bills, but the ads themselves are largely disguised as content - ads look just like any other content in the app. It does say sponsored while showing an ad, but it's subtle.

nl2• 5 years ago

Yes TikTok has ads AND the ad rates are pretty high (I worked in marketing tech for a while and saw the rate card and the huge amount companies spend there)

094459• 5 years ago

Combination of easy to use editing tools and effects to emphasise creativity together with the sound tracks. It’s often missed but the soundtracks were (still) are a big reason for it’s traction. It’s become the new mtv

jimbob45• 5 years ago

Twitter is allergic to making good business decisions. Even later on, they never attempted to resurrect Vine after TikTok showed the way and FB followed suit with Instagram Reels.

baby• 5 years ago

None of the explanations here are satisfying. I want to hear from someone who actually worked on Vine at the time.

ffhhj• 5 years ago

Whoever worked at Vine didn't see its demise approaching.

booleandilemma• 5 years ago

Vine was funny (really funny) but Tiktok shows you what you want to see, and that’s more powerful. It’s very effective and scarily addictive in a way Vine wasn’t.

raverbashing• 5 years ago

They fumbled the usability of the app. Badly.

tayo42• 5 years ago

I don't get why people keep saying vine should have been popular. Myspace beat facebook and look which survived. Myspace was never going to be like facebook. Why should vine have been as big as tiktok just because it was first? Theres plenty of examples of being first not being the winner.

ng123• 5 years ago

Vine was shut down prior to TikTok's launch. Vine had struck gold and was discarded, then foreign copycats (TikTok and Musical.ly) filled the void. It's one thing for TikTok to beat Vine, another for Vine/Twitter to not even try.

At the very least it's an interesting parable of how short-sighted "innovative" big tech companies can be.

nl2• 5 years ago

unceremoniously killed by Twitter

Twitter wouldn't know a good product idea or how to find one if it hit them in the face.

They got lucky with the original Twitter product, but the biggest change since it has launched is increasing tweet length from 140 to 280 characters.

Compare that to Facebook who - for all their faults - know how to iterate on product ideas and leverage their platform to build new markets.

AndrewKemendo• 5 years ago

I think the biggest difference is that the number of mobile-app users worldwide is double that from 2016, when Twitter announced they were shutting vine down.

When Vine started in 2012 there were only ~1B smartphone users.

boibombeiro2• 5 years ago

The average data bandwidth also increased.

sergiotapia• 5 years ago

Tiktok is much better as it allows people to infinitely remix existing content. Like a video with a funny sound? With one tap you can make your own and get that "SEO" juice from using that popular sound.

LordAtlas• 5 years ago

The Twitter Touch: the opposite of the Midas Touch. Everything they touch turns to shit.

franciscop• 5 years ago

Note that this is "average time on app", which draws two potential pitfalls:

• Youtube is consumed A LOT on the website, including some people using the mobile website (not the app) to keep it playing in the background (duh). This only compares average time on app.

• It could also be totally skewed, if let's say 100M people spend 2h/day on average on Youtube, and 1k (a tiny amount) spend 2.5h/day on average on Tiktok, that'd be already good enough to say "average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok".

I haven't read the report, but wanted to point out these two warnings. As we say in Spanish, the easiest way to lie is with statistics. And of course any half-decent PR person will take any numbers and blow it up into a headline, so tread with caution.

(Absolutely not wanting to discount on Tiktok, which has been growing at an incredible rate, just wanted to say that the wording on how exactly they are "winning" sounded a bit contrieved).

willcipriano• 5 years ago

I imagine NewPipe users alone could account for a large chunk of time. I leave it on overnight frequently.

jbluepolarbear• 5 years ago

I refuse to use the YouTube app. The ads have gotten so bad. The website I can use an ad blocker and it’s fine to watch. I try using the app iOS or TVOS and it’s 3 ads to start and an ad every 5 minutes.

pininja• 5 years ago

I recommend buying YouTube Premium. I’ve been a happy customer for a couple years now. It’s better for the creators compared to blocking ads too and they get paid based on your watch time. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276

malwarebytess3• 5 years ago

The nice thing about tiktok is I haven't seen an ad I can't immediately skip. And since I don't follow influencer accounts I also don't see "product placement" or promotional videos.

Truly, I can't remember watching a single advertisement on tiktok because it's so easy to skip them. The moment they force ad watching ala youtube I'm out.

webmobdev3• 5 years ago

Vanced is a fantastic YouTube alternative app for android - https://vancedapp.com/

sharken• 5 years ago

After YouTube introduced the age verification for stuff like game demos it has not been the same.

It would be interesting to see what kind of content TikTok excels in if such a list exists.

firecall• 5 years ago

The article also says "Data from app monitoring firm App Annie indicates that average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok, indicating high levels of engagement."

Now, I don't know for sure, but I cant imagine that YouTube is integrating App Annie metrics into their YouTube App, right?

It's not like Google dont have their own metrics platform...

And is TikTok really using App Annie?

So where are they getting the data from?

Are they including media streaming devices like ATV, Chromecast, Roku, and so on?

Overall it's a misleading report that misrepresents the attention graph of platform consumption!

est31• 5 years ago

You can find out which app is currently opened in Android. Do this repeatedly and you get an impression for how long which app gets used. All App Annie needs to do is pay popular app vendors to ship their data collection SDK. They might not get perfect data like Google does, but large enough samples to make statements like this.

est• 5 years ago

Now, I don't know for sure, but I cant imagine that YouTube is integrating App Annie metrics into their YouTube App, right?

It's based on Android battery stats. You can download 3rd party battery stats from Google Play and view other app's usage time.

Abishek_Muthian2• 5 years ago

They use VPN, Ad blocker and every other apps which people indiscriminately give permissions to, They buyout such apps with significant number of users from the play/App stores and extrapolate the data collected through those apps.

I wouldn't be surprised if publishers directly pay App Annie under the table to boost their stats.

As far as YouTube screen-time is concerned Web, Game Consoles, Media centers & smart TVs would account significant screen-time and it's unlikely App Annie's data hoarding apps are installed in them(Unless say shoddy media center bought from Ali express).

That said, TikTok might well indeed take over YouTube sometime in the future as they are doing what YouTube did in the beginning - Home videos sans shitty cameras, Now YouTube is all about top 1% creators with Michael Bay movie budget for each video.

P.S. Not an endorsement for TikTok, Never used it, Will never use it for their moderation practice against the disabled.

B-Con• 5 years ago

Note particularly:

However, YouTube retains the top spot for overall time spent - not per user - as it has many more users overall.

The HN title directly implies this, not the real start. It's misleading and needs to be changed.

8eye• 5 years ago

with all that data, they can map public areas and find the best to settle in, that media is influencing public opinion, they can prune messages they disagree with even more so than youtube has ever done.

foxhop2• 5 years ago

Whelp this is not a trend TikTok really is just that addictive. I created an account and its a firehose.

I post short permaculture videos: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMRfVWm76/

fragmede7• 5 years ago

Heads up that your link, vm.tiktok.com is tracked to your user. If I go to that video and share a link, I'll get a different URL. Previous iterations of their web frontend revealed user account info (eg the name used to register the foxhop user, assuming you snagged that username), but it looks like the current frontend no longer shows that.

foxhop2• 5 years ago

What should I do instead, not use TikTok or is there a "safer" way to share?

sjg0072• 5 years ago

Wow.. this is huge.

shp0ngle2• 5 years ago

People here always say, how TikTok algorithm is "amazing"; while every time I try it, I just see teenagers badly dancing.

trhway• 5 years ago

that is probably the main point of all of it - generation change. The tiktok is GenZ. The "teenagers badly dancing" is probably a very meaningful content for them.

blahedo4• 5 years ago

This is a valid critique, and why I originally dropped tiktok after a few brief attempts last year. The trick is that you have to do a little work up front to find videos you like (perhaps they've been crossposted to your Facebook feed or something). Early this year I watched and liked videos from about four completely different tiktok creators that I specifically sought out (because I'd seen one of their videos crossposted to FB), and from then on my FYP has been scary-good at serving up stuff that would appeal to me.

ETA: I basically never see teenagers dancing badly. Those videos exist in a different wing of TikTok from the ones I frequent.

shp0ngle2• 5 years ago

Ah, fair.

I don't think I ever saw a TikTok feed I really liked, maybe that one guy singing the sea shanties? But yeah that's about it

tehwebguy• 5 years ago

YouTube is going to blow it with the extremely hamfisted and enraging TikTok clone built into the YouTube app. Being unable to exit a video the same way one would exit a normal YT video is a nightmare, esp since you often won’t know it’s a “short” until it’s too late. There are other dealbreaker bugs in the shorts player. Hope they figure out another way and change course.

hnthrow12997• 5 years ago

Ultimately tiktok is enjoyable and I feel happy after closing it. Western apps by comparison are filled with the culture wars and I open them less and less often. Hn included.

anonygler• 5 years ago

This is intensely offensive. US tech companies are banned, robbed, and defrauded by China. We have no chance to compete with them in China, yet they can come here and freely. Tiktok should be banned.

say_it_as_it_is• 5 years ago

I can't watch TikTok. It's the most obnoxious media I've ever seen. Where is the pause or stop button!? The UX feels like a ride on a rail car without brakes that is run by a coked out conductor.

mkr-hn2• 5 years ago

I wish the thing killing Google's golden goose weren't worse than Google.

TikTok does it by pairing Twitter-level burnout-causing engagement juicing with short videos with no option to turn off autoplay.

fennecfoxy• 5 years ago

Yeah, probably because I never watch YT on the app, usually casting via Chromecast to a projector.

YT now has their "shorts" as well that they're desperately trying to push to fill the gap that TikTok (well actually Vine) has created. But their big mistake was only allowing people to watch shorts on mobile...

TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

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