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- Cristina J. Orgaz @cjorgaz
- BBC World News
Image source, Getty Images
Singer Addison Rae is a Tik Tok star.
A mobile screen, a vertical video and 1 minute of your life.
These three elements are the essence of Tik Tok, the social network for short videos that is overwhelming young people and that has already changed the video consumption habits of thousands of users.
How can it be so addictive?
You open it, it’s 4 o’clock and when you look at the clock again, an hour has passed.
I really wear it watch short videos nonstop for 60 minutes?
Infinite scrolling, a social media design, does its job well on Tik Tok.
So much so that up to the ad looks like another video.
It blends in with the rest of the content until it appears invisible.
This is the first clue that what seems in principle simple, it takes a lot of work engineering behind.
The second, Matthew Brennan, author of “Attention Factory” and technology specialist in China, explains to BBC Mundo, is one of the most sophisticated recommendation algorithms of the world.
Image source, Matthew Brennan
Matthew Brennan is an Internet specialist in China.
With around 800 million monthly active users, its success is no accident.
Only in 2019 TikTok and Douyin – their equivalent in China – have been downloaded nearly 2 billion times around the world.
The company ByteD.reeds, its owner, it is not a file to boot set up in a garage that one day happened by chance.
They knew how to do it
The executives and engineers behind the app, says Brennan, they knew how to convert this short video service in one of the most compelling social networks in the world.
“There isn’t a small team behind it. It is one of the largest Internet companies in China. It employs thousands of people. If TikTok has grown so fast is due to the experience of its engineers since it runs the best recommendation engine in the competitive Chinese market, “he says in an interview with BBC Mundo.
“It is rivaling YouTube and Instagram, the platforms that people go to when they have free time, where they go to entertain or seek status“, nut.
Image source, Getty Images
TikTok is the social platform for short videos (no longer than 60 seconds).
This algorithm use machine learning to find out what content each individual prefers based on their behavior.
“What makes it so compelling is that it learns what you like and what you don’t like. And it does it quickly because in 1 minute you can watch 5 or 6 videos.”
“In that time frame, you have to discard the video or watch it. And that action reveals whether you like it or not. So ByteDance you can get a lot of information in a very short time“.
Compared to what happens on other platforms, the process is slower.
“You can watch anything for 5 minutes on YouTube without touching the screen. If it’s Netflix you can watch half an hour without doing anything.”
“So the system gets less feedback. You don’t help them understand how you feel, whether you find it boring or not,” he adds.
“In TikTok, constantly interact with the application And even if you don’t, you are also providing information. If you do nothing, it means that you have stopped in a video and are watching it. It’s a very strong indicator that you find what you see interesting, ”says Brennan.
“This quickly creates an interest chart for each user and the recommendation engine will feed your page with content for you.”
Image source, Getty Images
The content that TikTok offers you is completely different from anyone else’s, the algorithm customizes it for you.
It’s another key to TikTok: the customization is extreme.
“What you see is different from what your friend sees. This is the power. This is why it is so addictive“.
The best of each
Each phase of TikTok’s development was based directly on previously created products and technologies.
“The engineers replicated technology, experience the product and promotional playbook of its sister app, the Chinese Douyin, ”says Brennan.
It’s like TikTok a mix of all the features more attractive than the apps previously developed by ByteDance.
With its global take-off in 2018, they confirmed that what they learned in dozens of lesser-known applications had served to create a platform that hit the mark.
“ByteDance was the first Chinese Internet company to go” all-in “on nascent technology and engage in the daunting task of build a recommendation engine, challenging the “status quo” of human healing, “says the expert.
“This initial bet paid off. The foundations for TikTok’s success were laid many years earlier the application was created, and it is no coincidence that ByteDance was the company that made it, “he says in his book” Attention Factory “.
Image source, Matthew Brennan
Matthew Brennan is the author of the book “Attention Factory”
The icing on this growth was the huge budget to promote it.
“They spent billions of dollars advertising it on Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat,” says Brennan.
Furthermore, in the ByteDance ecosystem, everything is interconnected.
When a user has downloaded many of their applications to their mobile phone, a like it in one it becomes a better recommendation in the other, explains the author.
Information is shared with each other.
How Internet consumption has changed
People use a laptop very differently from a smartphone.
Mobile internet usage can normally be split into 30-40 sessions per day.
Sometimes the look at the phone lasts less than 60 seconds.
Image source, Matthew Brennan
This is how Matthew Brennan illustrates in his book “Attention Factory” what video consumption is like on the two most popular platforms.
So if it used to be normal to consume videos in the morning, then go to work or school and turn on your computer again to watch YouTube in the afternoon, now the userS. you can connect to TikTok at any time of the day.
And not just for watching, but also for uploading videos.
“I really believe the short videos are a new paradigm for consuming content from Internet. And it’s a huge change in behavior. It is something that will remain in the long term.
For Brennan, “the phenomenon is only just beginning and will become even more important and will have more users and, I suppose you can say that it will become even more compelling. We are still in the early stages, ”says Brennan.
For him, TikTok’s next expansion will come from all kinds of genres for the 1-minute video format.
From instruction to cooking recipes.
Image source, Getty Images
Content creators have a perfect platform for making short videos on TikTok.
“TikTok has already changed the way consumers interact with social media platforms and there will be even more evolution,” says the specialist.
“We are likely to see innovations in content. In China, there are all kinds of things, as people do mysterious videos or psychological thrillers. Things you would never say fit in such a short time. “
Integration with other services
“We will also see how the short videos are integrated with the buy online, live broadcasts or virtual gifts“, afirma Brennan.
“All of these things have already been developed in the Chinese version. And I think they are just beginning in other parts of the world,” he says.
“Today ByteDance is a growing company. Like other large internet conglomerates, their presence has expanded to a myriad of online services consisting of games, education, business productivity, payments, and more“, cree.
This is what awaits us for the next few years, he says with conviction.
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