[HN Gopher] The unlikely odds of making it big on TikTok
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The unlikely odds of making it big on TikTok
Author : noplsbecivil
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-07-29 18:44 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pudding.cool)
(TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
| taylorius wrote:
| I worry that tiktok is such an all-or-nothing system, you have to
| turn into a "maximally viral" artist to stand a chance. The
| tiktok system itself warps what constitutes popular taste.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| It mostly is. Very unforgiving if you want to branch out to
| different types of content or even subjects. You become a
| person known for one thing that made you popular and it's hard
| for most to break out of that unless they had an existing
| platform.
|
| You either follow trends or make your own. Otherwise you'll
| fall off quickly.
| amelius wrote:
| Isn't the same true for, say, apps in an App Store?
|
| Did anyone actually analyze what is happening there, i.e. how
| fair the system is or how much it is like a lottery?
| dopeboy wrote:
| To be a self sustaining business, probably. For the hobbyist
| creators, there's a long tail of creators that don't need to go
| maximally viral and still enjoy a healthy following.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| A viral song in any format has usually never guaranteed continued
| similar success (How many PSY or Rebecca Black follow up records
| do people know?) - why would it be different on TikTok.
|
| Often a viral hit will be due to a beat or quirky lyrics that
| aren't repeated in the rest of an artists music. Continued
| success needs a fanbase that's interested in a lot more of your
| music.
| phreack wrote:
| Incidentally, I recently remembered about Rebecca Black and
| went looking to find out she did continue singing and now has a
| legit established pop career with tons of songs. I heard a few
| and became a big fan, they're pretty good if you like pop!
|
| I guess it's a good idea to use a viral moment to gather those
| few fans who'll appreciate the art you'll like to make
| continuously.
| rvz wrote:
| It is no different and it's the same old power law which the
| rewards and success diminishes as more creators and users are
| doing the same thing on the platform.
|
| It's not about the one trick pony hit's that exist on a single
| platform which the article is focused on, it is indeed the
| continuation afterwards which a creator's following will still
| exist beyond TikTok or wherever their debut hit originated
| from.
|
| Inevitably, The corporations, media and the existing larger
| influencers from other platforms will join in and ruin the
| platform, just like they did with the rest of the others. The
| over glorified algorithm has already been gamed by them to
| increase engagement, ads, etc such that smaller and late
| creators have depleting chances of being recognised.
|
| Nothing has changed.
| eckza wrote:
| All of this has happened before; and it will happen again.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > How many PSY
|
| PSY was successful before and after Gangnam Style... But he's a
| Korean artist and never meant to go global so of course his
| appeal might be limited beyond one funny video.
| est31 wrote:
| The best example is mentioned in the post: Lil Nas X. His song
| "Old Town Road" went viral thanks to TikTok, and "real" fame
| followed afterwards.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lil_Nas_X#2018%E2%80%932019:_B...
|
| > Lil Nas X began creating memes to promote "Old Town Road"
| before it was picked up by short-form video social media TikTok
| users. [...] Lil Nas X estimated he made about 100 memes to
| promote it; the song went viral in early 2019 due to the
| #Yeehaw Challenge meme on TikTok. Millions of users posted
| videos of themselves dressed as a wrangler or cowgirl, with
| most #yeehaw videos using the song for their soundtrack; as of
| July 2019, they have been seen more than 67 million times.
| Another core audience tied to social media is children who are
| hidden in the statistics of adult listeners. Quartz.com says
| the song certainly owes part of its success to the demographic,
| and notes they are attracted to the song being repetitive, easy
| to sing along to, and using lyrics about riding horses and
| tractors, which children can relate to. It debuted at number 83
| on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, later climbing to number one.
| The track also debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart at number
| 19 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at number 36. After an "intense
| bidding war", Lil Nas X signed with Columbia Records in March
| 2019.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > How many PSY or Rebecca Black follow up records do people
| know?
|
| Rebecca Black had a viral video that people liked because of
| how bad the song was, and how badly it was performed. She not
| only didn't disappear, but parlayed being known for something
| terrible into a entire career.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Rebecca Black perhaps, but PSY is certainly not a 1-hit-wonder.
|
| https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/officialpsy
|
| > 120.75M (+5.8%) Video Views for the last 30 days
|
| And that's just on YouTube. Sure, none of their followups
| received quite the same amount of attention, but they certainly
| have a healthy sustained audience.
| antihero wrote:
| She's making a comeback in hyperpop with various collabs!
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Psy was a well established artist in South Korea having won
| national awards for his musc well before Gangnam Style. He'd
| hardly qualify as a 1 hit wonder.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Yes, perhaps I should have said it more explicitly.
| jer0me wrote:
| Box made a video in collaboration with The Pudding about this:
| https://youtu.be/S1m-KgEpoow
| Ekaros wrote:
| So what are the numbers compared to other platforms? Honestly
| 12,5% doesn't sound too bad... How does that compare to let's say
| Spotify, Youtube and so on...
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's saying 12.5% of popular bands on Spotify were boosted into
| it by Tiktok. The odds of becoming a successful artist are much
| smaller.
|
| He has another project that found that 21 of seven thousand
| bands became big, and those 7k were bands that had actually
| managed to book and play a small show.
| https://pudding.cool/2017/01/making-it-big/
| wizofaus wrote:
| Apparently Tiktok allows videos of up to 10 minutes, which in
| theory would make it suitable as a music distribution platform,
| but how many videos over 3 or 4 minutes actually go viral?
| dirtydirk wrote:
| People don't have the attention span to watch anything over 30
| seconds anymore
| wizofaus wrote:
| The average length of the 100 most popular TikToks is
| apparently 15 seconds, which should tell you something.
| Apparently the increase to 10 minutes max was only very
| recent (up from 3). Either way it's hard to see how a
| musician could become successful just by staying on TikTok.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| So are users completely at the mercy of its recommendation
| algorithm - suddenly you appear at the feed of millions of
| people, if the system finds your content viral enough?
|
| Or is there room for people to game the system? I.e. publish
| content, and pay click farms to make your stuff look legit?
| rvz wrote:
| > So are users completely at the mercy of its recommendation
| algorithm
|
| Yes they are.
|
| It's the same old situation with YouTube's algorithm, where it
| dictates what gets seen or unseen on people's feeds and which
| tags get blacklisted or not and that is all done by TikTok.
| Once you change it, it can be controlled by a single entity for
| any reason. Since they have done this previously, angering a
| large section of its user base, they have the power to do it
| again.
|
| > Or is there room for people to game the system? I.e. publish
| content, and pay click farms to make your stuff look legit?
|
| It already has been gamed, both by amateurs and professionally.
|
| In the professional case, it's already happened with the large
| advertisers, existing influencers and companies that have
| started to jump onto the platform. They have done it through
| promotional and backroom corporate deals, since they have
| enough money, influence to make sure that their content is
| pushed to the largest amount of users regardless. Hence this,
| all these systems have been gamed by this old tactic, and that
| includes this over glorified recommendation algorithm.
|
| This is how it will get ruined, and it is beyond the hype
| comments and boosters that you see here screaming about the
| number of views they have, reminding us of the basic near peak
| of the power law where the majority of the hype will deplete
| once the large companies, existing influencers, advertisers
| start aggressively pushing their posts, ads, etc for engagement
| farming and growth in another social network, that will appear
| regardless of TikTok's algorithm.
|
| Rinse and repeat.
| status200 wrote:
| Tiktok will definitely be replaced by a similar app if they don't
| start paying out to their content creators in a similar way that
| Youtube (still awful, but better) does.
|
| Hank Green has a great video[0] on the difference since he is on
| both platforms, and unless there is more compensation to the
| creators, they will get burned out chasing the high of the
| occasional viral video.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64
| vonseel wrote:
| Possibly. But users aren't likely to switch unless the content
| creators leave, and the content creators will stay if they have
| more views there than on Instagram / YouTube / etc. (actually,
| they probably just post the same videos to all the platforms,
| to maximize exposure at almost no cost).
|
| People always say X network is going to go the way of MySpace,
| but when's the last time that happened? I wouldn't say any of
| FB, Twitter, Snap, Instagram have died off the way MySpace did.
| Certain age groups may have migrated to other platforms, but
| these networks are so ingrained and established that millions
| of people can leave and it doesn't matter.
|
| There's still a huge population using all of the networks and
| unless a new app provides some new unique feature like Snapchat
| and TikTok did when people first started using them, I don't
| see anything popping up to replace them.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I am very doubtful of that. A large percentage of YouTube
| content creators are essentially ineligible for monetization in
| any meaningful way due to various demonetization algorithms,
| and thus sustain themselves outside of YouTube. I imagine the
| same can happen on TikTok.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| The value of tiktok is that you don't need an existing audience
| to get views.
|
| Using it to establish yourself is great, it's a means to an end,
| a marketing tool like the rest.
| psyc wrote:
| In all of the TikTok praise threads we've had here, this is the
| first time I can remember ever seeing anybody mention what I
| personally believe is a killer distinguishing feature. TikTok's
| algo guarantees that every video will appear on at least N
| FYPs. Then if it performs well in that ad hoc 'test group' it
| will be show to a wider group, and so on.
| atom-morgan wrote:
| There really is no better platform for exposure. Just over a
| week ago my TikTok had just under 1k followers. I'm currently
| at 5.2k.
|
| Compare that to something like Twitter or Twitch. You can go
| for months, even years, without ever getting noticed.
| notahacker wrote:
| My friend posted a video of his wife stroking a cat on his
| brand new TikTok account and within two days got >5 million
| views and offers of sponsorship from cat food suppliers :D
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I posted a math video and it only got 2 views. I'm probably
| terrible though.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Many of the most successful youtube/twitch streamers leverage a
| blow up on TikTok to garner an audience on a more lucrative
| platform.
| txru wrote:
| Wow I absolutely love the styling on that page on mobile.
|
| When you scroll past the "8 signs of successful musician" guide
| to the list of musicians, it pins the guide to the top of the
| screen so you can compare every musician. Really natural, should
| be everywhere.
| liberia wrote:
| I've figured out a way to get loads of views on Facebook. The
| trick is to use their Groups feature. Join every group that has
| no less than 100,000 members then when sharing choose 'Share to
| group' and post to every group you joined. I've got silly little
| cat videos getting 1M views within a week of posting...
|
| Part of going viral is luck too. If you're lucky some high
| profile account will share your post, and the popularity soars.
| ok123456 wrote:
| That's literally just spam.
| liberia wrote:
| Well I make sure the post is on topic. So funny stuff goes to
| humor groups. Inspirational quotes go to all the
| wisdom/spirituality/philosophy groups. Even better if it's
| your own material. I find reposts of other's content a bit
| shallow and meaningless.
| winternett wrote:
| TikTok operates in mystery and it's really a smoke screen for big
| industry music and advertisers. The trending sounds are hand
| picked behind the scenes, Kate Bush Running up the Hill, a song
| originally released in the 80s on EMI Records (A major label)
| trending now in 2022 is proof of the underlying influence that
| big business has on the platform:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_Up_That_Hill
|
| Many people think that TikTok's algorithm is showing them what
| they want to see, but in truth it's showing people what makes the
| platform the most money inserted into brief videos made by people
| who aren't getting paid for their work, who are also hand picked
| by platform moderators.
|
| TikTok will collapse as quick as it is rising when, just like
| Facebook, users stop logging in and stop posting content.
|
| Platforms don't create sub-category lists for content because
| that causes them do do more work, and it also causes them
| generally to not be able to advertise things across the entire
| platform and test ads on markets more effectively. The truth of
| these giant platforms is that they don't help undiscovered
| creators, they exist to capture money from the largest business
| entities, and they woo big business in with huge user bases that
| often involve huge volumes of non-engaged and bot followers.
|
| These sites also limit users visibility regularly in favor of
| showing platform ads and content from more popular *sponsored
| accounts. They also run verification for popular accounts to
| create even more content bias that hurts unknown creators that
| can't qualify for verification, just to show they are an
| authentic creator.
|
| It's easy to tell how a platform's vibrance declines when a user
| has tens of thousands of followers, but only a hand full of likes
| on each post. This is most apparent right now on Twitter (for
| example). Platforms often generate fake user accounts to mimic
| vibrance as well, this also creates buzz as people don't take the
| time out to investigate actual engagement on sites before they
| report on them being popular.
|
| TikTok removed post dates from being displayed on content they
| play so that you can't tell as a viewer that new content posts
| are in decline as users discover that the hype isn't working for
| them and that ads and sponsored posts are increasing. The
| majority of these large content platforms are all beginning to
| converge into charging users for visibility by promoting ad
| buying, another sign that they are really in decline rather than
| growing. When ads are purchased, many of these sites steer the ad
| content to overseas audiences that have no interest in buying
| products and services advertised as they slowly lose the ability
| to accurately target individual users.
|
| The platforms that become most popular now are well versed in
| creating false narratives on potential for creator success and in
| creating smoke and mirrors and untruthful motivation content to
| keep encouraging independent creators to prop them up, but behind
| the scenes, they're all devoid of integrity and authentic user
| experiences, while being full of hope and promises that they
| don't deliver based on being their business models alone.
|
| I recommend saving time and having a far better online presence
| as a creator, business, or brand by building and cultivating your
| own web site. Social media is dysfunctional, very costly for
| minor success, and time consuming while only offering short-term
| durability and name recognition.
| unsignednoop wrote:
| tangibly related: does anybody know how google and other search
| engines fair in indexing TikTok/Douyin?
|
| I wonder if the inability to go viral relates to the difficultly
| of finding tiktok videos off-platform. Admittedly, every TT video
| I have ever seen has been sent to me via a share link.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| Does TikTok just have reams of content selectors deciding if
| certain posts are good or not?
|
| Otherwise I can't see how they could auto-decide to push out
| content to large audiences without something they don't like
| getting out.
|
| Like, they'd only need to sift through a handful of videos to
| reward random publishers with thousands of views, perhaps even
| with fake numbers, and people would probably gobble it up.
| OJFord wrote:
| I suppose I don't know about 'reams', but a concierge in London
| told me he'd taken a job there doing just that.
| wongarsu wrote:
| TikTok's app is the result of designing an app around a
| recommendation algorithm (instead of adding recommendations to
| an app, as everyone else did). As a result you get great
| recommendations. I imagine that also really helps with
| moderation and censorship: Identify videos you want to
| restrict, check which cohort gets recommended those the most,
| then concentrate your moderation efforts on videos that the
| algorithm wants to recommend these people.
|
| The recommendations and people's video interactions allow you
| to classify both people and videos.
| solalf wrote:
| > TikTok's app is the result of designing an app around a
| recommendation algorithm
|
| First time I hear of TikTok in those terms. Could you expand
| on what that means?
| shep101 wrote:
| he just did
| paulcole wrote:
| I'm very curious how you've heard TikTok described in the
| past.
|
| The whole point of TikTok is that you don't have to follow
| people or engage with your friends on the platform. You
| just open it up and it'll show you videos that you'll like.
| Obviously, there is a little bit of "training" involved.
| Within about 20-40 minutes it really started to zero in on
| things I liked.
| rolisz wrote:
| Here's an article discussing this at length:
| https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-
| algo...
| wongarsu wrote:
| The app is designed in a way that basically everything you
| do results in a strong positive or negative signal for a
| video that the recommendation algorithm can use.
|
| Take Youtube, a video site that added suggestions. If
| you're logged in, you get dumped on a homepage with an
| endlessly scrolling list of recommendations. You scroll
| until a thumbnail or video title catches your eye, you
| watch that video, might like or comment, then click one of
| ~10 recommendations. The algorithm gets a positive signal
| based on what you click and your watch-time, but the
| negative signal on anything you don't click is incredibly
| weak. Because _you_ choose what you watch, positive signals
| are mostly driven by titles, thumbnails and familiarity,
| and negative signals are rare. As a result, most
| recommendations are stuff you know or things adjacent to it
| (people who watch this also watch this), and quickly get
| boring. The recommendations can 't inject novelty or
| purposefully expand the algorithm's knowledge.
|
| Now on Tiktok: You open the app, you get a single video in
| full screen. Either you scroll on (negative signal) or you
| watch it until the end (positive), or you let it repeat
| (very positive). Or you might like or comment. After
| scrolling on, you get another video in full screen, same
| game again. The cost of a bad recommendation is low because
| videos are short and quick to judge, so the algorithm can
| occasionally give you videos it's uncertain about or that
| are selected completely randomly. Your reaction _will_ give
| a signal, no matter what (either you watch till the end or
| you don 't) and as a result the algorithm knows more about
| you and about the video.
| ma2rten wrote:
| I don't know about other people but I tend to just watch
| every video until the end because they are so short that
| I don't have enough time to decide if I like them or not.
|
| Maybe I'm too old for TikTok.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| That explains the viewer's side, but what about the
| publisher/influencer side? How does TikTok decide one
| video is more suitable than another?
|
| My guess is every single video is marked by a human for
| how much exposure it should get, and if they let
| something get out that shouldn't, that person is
| reprimanded.
| ksdnjweusdnkl21 wrote:
| Just show it to a handful of people, if they liked it
| show it to more. Keep looping this and good videos go
| viral, and bad videos don't.
| saurik wrote:
| (Essentially using a standard strategy for multi-armed
| bandit.)
| scrollaway wrote:
| > _My guess is every single video is marked by a human
| for how much exposure it should get, and if they let
| something get out that shouldn 't, that person is
| reprimanded._
|
| ... Wait what? Why would that be your guess? How is this
| easier than, you know, anything else?
| gernb wrote:
| TikTok is about short videos. Youtube is about longer
| videos. People expect short videos and are looking for
| short videos so they'll put up with random videos. On
| Youtube I look for 10-30 minute videos on specific
| topics, not just random funny videos.
|
| To put it another way, TikTok is Ice Creme, Youtube is
| dinner. A popular Ice cream stand has a lot more
| throughput than most restaurants. It only takes ~1 minute
| to serve a customer some ice cream.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Which you could argue is another case of TikTok building
| everything around the recommendation algorithm. It just
| works better with short videos.
|
| YouTube used to be full with 3-4 minute videos back in
| the day, with a ten minute maximum. Longer than TikTok,
| but not much. But those short videos all but died out
| when the 10-minute videos got another ad spot and thus
| more money for the creator.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > Either you scroll on (negative signal) or you watch it
| until the end (positive), or you let it repeat (very
| positive).
|
| Sounds like this would heavily incentivize items that are
| immediately catchy. Slow buildup stuff would die in this
| environment.
| [deleted]
| psyc wrote:
| Yes. The users. TikTok is unique (afaik) in that every new
| video is shown to a sample group of real users, and its
| performance evaluated. If it does well in that group, it's
| shown to a larger group. If it continues to do well, it's shown
| to a still larger group, etc.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| You are forgetting TikTok mods tasked to shadowban from "For
| You" anybody they think is physically unattractive, poor, go
| political in livestreams, etc.
| (https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-
| us...)
|
| Don't have any illusions, they can easily control what goes
| viral if it matters to the mothership.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| Yeah, keeping political content off the service must
| require a company-connected person to review every piece of
| content that reaches a certain level of exposure.
|
| I don't think they are successful at keeping off political
| content though, in the sense that denying political content
| is a political statement itself in favor of the status quo.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It's not about them making political statements, but
| about their moderation policy. I almost think you are
| responding to a wrong comment.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| They are quite unsuccessful at it. I often get _very_
| political content on my for you page - for some of my
| friends that 's the vast majority of the content they get,
| and a good third of it is from either non conventionally
| attractive people or very obviously poor people.
|
| The manual shadowbanning fight is one they will never win.
| vonseel wrote:
| I wonder how the app determines what users should see a
| video.
|
| If someone post a clip playing guitar and singing for
| example, would it determine this is a performance, and it
| should show it to cohorts who have liked viewing performances
| in the past?
|
| Or would the AI model work more like... show (unknown type)
| clip to random people, identify similarities in the people
| who like or dislike the video based on those user's viewing
| habits and then try to identify the video type based on that
| knowledge? I guess the second method would be very
| inefficient unless combined with some feature extraction and
| metadata / tagging from the source.
|
| Not an ML person, just a curious dev.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| One part of this is geographical - amongst the videos shown
| to me that are clearly testing, about half of them are
| clearly from near me.
| Jensson wrote:
| Technically they could have thousands of content reviewers in
| China working fulltime rating videos based on emotions. With a
| minute a video, they'd each crunch through hundreds of videos a
| day, and language doesn't matter since you can feel emotion
| from any language. Add some basic algorithm to select videos to
| review (new creators and creators with a track record) and
| you'd get a "magical algorithm".
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| Thousands? How about millions. Facebook employed 15,000
| content reviewers in 2020, plus probably ten times that
| volunteering to mod their own FB pages. I'd expect China's
| state owned western-facing social media site to have far
| more.
| begueradj wrote:
| Joe Reviews TikTok's Crazy Terms of Service:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtGwlQWqQWs&ab_channel=Power...
| charleskinbote wrote:
| Undoubtedly very similar if not identical to what other social
| media platforms do. For all these apps, there should be
| explicit big banner opt-in prompts with a default of opt-out at
| the very least, e.g. "can we correlate you to other devices
| using your keystroke patterns?". I don't think the average
| person should be obligated to accept or reject terms of service
| wholesale but instead term by term; put the burden on the
| company, not the consumer. It would encourage smaller sets of
| terms and make the users more aware of what they're getting
| into.
| mtrycz2 wrote:
| Nah, just leave. And explain to everyone why they should
| leave.
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| people who can afford to leave social media aren't prolly
| in circles that have heavy uses of sm. I would love to get
| off sm, but literally can't afford to, because it's almost
| essential to stay in contact with friends and know about
| events.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| You have the choice. If you've weighted your options and
| decided to stay on social media because you value what it
| gives you more than what it takes, that's your choice.
| But you _do_ have a choice.
|
| Also, if your friends disown you because you choose not
| to use social media, are they really your friends? If
| they don't respect your decision, are unwilling to speak
| with you except through social media, then I personally
| wouldn't consider them friends. But that's up to you. And
| you can always make new friends.
| [deleted]
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Are you making it big if you explode on any platform and are
| forgotten later?
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