Why You Should Realize TikTok Has and Will Continue to Change the Game
My TikTok deep dive Part 1 | Vol. 8
Hello Family - Welcome to Vol. 8 of Move Fast, Think Slow. If you want to join other curious, smart readers of this newsletter you can do so here:
Let’s get it started in here
If you are not new here, scroll down to read this week’s dispatch. If you are new here, a little bit about Move Fast, Think Slow. This Newsletter was started to focus on two areas. One, cultural and business trends. Two, musings on mindful meditations and philosophy. It’s an excuse for me to write more but also, hopefully, dear reader, it’s an opportunity for you to learn something new or just be inspired.
The tl;dr of this week’s dispatch
If you’re not much of a reader but want to know the tl;dr here it is.
TikTok is eating the online video/smartphone content universe (TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK). P.S. YouTube is feeling the heat of TikTok so much that they’ve created their own TikTok-esque product called TikTok, I mean, YouTube Shorts.
TikTok is influencing culture through music, comedy, activism, creative storytelling, niche expertise, education, pro-tips, and more.
TikTok has and will continue to outshine legacy social networks/content platforms. The algorithm is better.
Speaking of which, TikTok’s algorithm is incredibly powerful and rewarding. The more content you like to watch, the more of that kind of content it shares with you.
TikTok has clear intentions of making a product that’s easy-to-use and maximizing potential long-term user value.
TikTok is a rich space for creators, creative people, and experts to be seen, have their voices heard, and build community.
TikTok has and will continue to be fertile territory for businesses big and small to communicate their chili in new and fun ways.
Why You Should Realize TikTok Has and Will Continue to Change the Game
This week on Move Fast, Think Slow I am focusing on the cultural and business trend that is TikTok. You might be tired of hearing about the latest "social media craze" over the past few years but here's thing; it's not a social media craze. It's the entire media and entertainment revolution that has and will continue to shift pop culture as we know it. That might sound hyperbolic, but if you read through this week's dispatch in its entirety, I think you too will see how TikTok has and will continue to change the game.
Now you might be aware of TikTok peripherally. How can you not be, it's taken up a lot of business/cultural news headlines over the past few years. Your niece or nephew are probably doing dance moves you never knew existed before in front of an iPhone and you have no idea why. Or someone has sent you a clip that's made you laugh out loud or got motivated because they discovered it on TikTok and shared it with you. Of you caught wind of that new foodie craze that literally had feta-cheese sold out of grocery stores throughout thanks to videos like this that go viral.
As someone who has been a futurist and built their advertising and media chops within social, I've always been a believer in the power of interactive content experiences. The supercomputer we hold in our hands every day enables nuanced storytelling and conversational connections to be formed. Yet, as an Advertiser, I'm not a "social media" maximalist. Television, out-of-home, and even Print ads still hold their place to do good marketing work for companies. There's plenty of research to prove that. But the smartphone in our hands enables interactions to happen and memory structures to form at a speed that’s fundamentally different than traditional entertainment and advertising. And for that, social has always provided a richer experience than other mediums. The speed, interactive connections, and accessibility to the microphone, camera, and more just make it a more dynamic user experience.
As I did in my post on the crypto exchange Coinbase, I took a deep dive on TikTok pouring through the year-in-review docs they shared out end of 2021. Upon digesting all of that info covering global fan favorites, content that makes you smile, music that moves your you know what, food ideas that make you go yum, voices for change that make you activate community, communities that let you nerd out, or nostalgia that lets you go deep on your geek.
After I did this deep dive and wrote version 1 of this post, I realized, there is too much to highlight. So I’m breaking this into two parts. The first part is the general overview and some eye-popping highlights/observations. The second part is more of the business and analytical focus of what the future might hold for TikTok and the internet culture at large.
The Power of User-First
You can’t know the product unless you use it. So I did just that over the holiday and was impressed with how easy certain features were to use when compared to other content creation platforms. Also, I was impressed with how the algorithm could make a seemingly boring rotation of content have so much life and make it fun. I was like okay, I see what people are diving in headfirst here. This is fun.
Then I stumbled upon this piece by NY Times that uncovered an internal doc from TikTok.
There are four main goals for TikTok’s algorithm: 用户价值, 用户价值 (长期), 作者价值, and 平台价值, which the company translates as “user value,” “long-term user value,” “creator value,” and “platform value.”
That all tracks. From what I have seen, everything on TikTok is optimized to be made easier than other platforms. As a creator, a user, a consumer, a participant. For all the above the product is easy to use. It's also built into their talent engagement team/customer service. #Smart #VerySmart
What was TikTok, before TikTok? Power of Audio
First - what is TikTok: Before it was TikTok the app was known as Music.ly. An app that let users create 15-second to 1-minute lip-syncing music videos and choose soundtracks to accompany them, use different speed options (time-lapse, fast, normal, slow motion, and epic), and add pre-set filters and effects.
This is really important because it speaks to a unique ingredient and edge TikTok has in terms of interactive-content experience. Rich musical and audio voiceover accompanying content features that are now used far and wide on TikTok. Just look at this remix of a scene out of Goodfellas that’s hilarious.
TikTok IS the Music Business/Music Game
TikTok is the music business: TikTok is the modern-day MTV but better because of the algorithm, one-to-one connections, and the supercomputers in our hands. Look at these numbers from 2020 and 2021 - just staggering numbers.
TikTok Proactively Supports Music Artists (amazing talent engagement/customer service offering):
“The success of Savage didn’t come out of nowhere. It resulted from a savvy marketing campaign, where TikTok’s management analyzed user data and advised Pete’s label on how to promote her." That's taken from this Bloomberg article on how TikTok coached Megan Thee Stallion to viral success on the App. This is a business that's operating intentionally and it's paying off for everyone. The platform, the artists, and the fans.
TikTok has all the LOLs, TikTok has has put super charged internet Meme Culture
TikTok is comedy. So. Many. LOLs: Folks utilizing the audio (do the father son TikTok duo with their stuff) or just participating in the memes that often become viral sensations (the when the ____ happens). Or just being a great place to catch some quick LOLs from your favorite comedian (Hassan Clip).
TikTok is giving birth to a new form of a comedian too - someone who gets writing and editing to tell a punch line or two. He sees TikTok as having created a new comedy genre; a non-punchline-focused trend he calls "existential chuckle". -
TikTok is where comedians are taking their shtick: A funny AF co-worker (Shannon Fielder) who is a comedian decided to take her show on the TikTok road when the pandemic hit two years ago. And you know what? She crushed it. 161,000 followers and 5,000,000 Likes later I think it’s safe to say, TikTok has added a new dimension to her repertoire while enabling her to keep at making people laugh.
Speaking of LOL, TikTok has taken meme culture to a whole new level: Internet memes have long been a form of creativity and cultural communications online. Memes are a sort of mirroring while remixing new variations of communications phenomena. This is how they started:
But this is how they are going (many of you saw and remember this from 2020):
And to bring all the above together (music, LOLs, Memes): That video single handily brought back an amazing rock classic from Fleetwood Mac that prompted me-toos of this video/meme including from Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks themselves to some 611,000 videos on TikTok. This is but one small example of how a video becomes memes to be copied, mashed up, collaborated on, and shared. This adds a whole new community dimension to all of this at the speed of culture that just hits different.
In Conclusion
I did miss out on examples around lifestyle, fashion, food, historical education, edutainment, and more. It’s just wild how many different types and styles of visual/audio storytelling in emerging on a day-to-day basis on TikTok.
If you’re in the business of creativity, storytelling, building a community, shilling out your latest product then you probably want to get on and start figuring out TikTok. To steal a gamer reference, I’m a noob but have started dabbling with it. Bottom line: It has and will continue to change the game of internet culture and culture at large.
End of Part 1 | Preview of Part 2
Next up I want to break down how TikTok as a business itself is crushing it and also how businesses small and large are finding success on the platform.