Vine 2.0

"Have you ever heard of this app? It's called TikTok" one of my readers emailed me a few weeks back.

"Yes, I have" I responded but then quickly added "but not enough to write an opinion on it."

"Well, you ought to read this article in The New York Times " answered my reader.

Curious, I clicked the hyperlink and perused the article. At the conclusion, I closed the article in disgust. The article had taken over ten minutes to read and had felt like a very long, overstuffed love letter. "Well, at least I know what it is and I'm done" I thought to myself.

Not true. Fast forward six weeks, subtract multiple hours from my life either reading about this app, its parent company, ByteDance or watching videos on TikTok itself and I have finally reached the end of the wormhole. Now, I can confidentially say that I do, truly, know TikTok. It's Vine 2.0.

For the unfamiliar, Vine was a short lived social media app that popularized short form content. And I'm talking really, really short form - think six seconds. Yes, blink too long, yawn or shift your gaze for just a few and you'd miss the entire video type of content.

I loved Vine. The app used to be a staple on my iPhone - one of my "go to" social media apps to grab a laugh, cringe or waste time. I was drawn in by the content and the community of interesting, odd or talented people I found there.

Some may argue the app was not around long enough to make an impact on society but I fundamentally disagree. Vine shaped the mid-2010s - Vine spawned internet celebrities like Shawn Mendes and Logan Paul (prior to his move to YouTube or controversial Aokigahara video). It bucked the trend that all videos had to be long (i.e. exceed one minute) to be successful and popularized the loopback feature (this will be important later).

It also had a tremendous user base - take a look at this stat -

"When Vine launched in 2013, it was a hit. Two years later the short-form service had 200 million active monthly users watching Vines play, or loop, more than 1.5 billion times every day." Money.com

It's existence and downfall (due to a certain social media application heavily copying their format and money issues at their parent company, Twitter, in 2017) are exactly what led to the rise of TikTok.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's take a quick trot down memory lane. At Vine's demise, multiple apps tried to fill that void -

Periscope

Live video app with an emphasis on "live" events - i.e. sports, changing of the guard at a palace, debates, etc.). The app amassed over 1M users in 7 days. Coincidentally, Periscope was also acquired by Twitter in 2015.

Dubsmash

Lip sync (songs, dialogue, etc.) + celebrity endorsement + random people

The app soared to popularity (and came to my attention in 2015) when the internet was flooded with celebrities lip syncing to popular songs.

Here's my personal favorite compilation of Marvel's Agents of Shield and Agent Carter competing against each other at Comic-Con.

Unfortunately, Dubsmash could not retain customers and suffered a huge data breach in 2018.

Facebook Live

Concerned it was being left behind in video, Facebook pushed out its own live video service in 2016 with disastrous results - in the first year, the service became known for broadcasting violence (i.e. mass shootings, murder, beatings, etc.) rather than people having a good time. Yet, the app has tallied over 2B people or 3.5B broadcasts since 2016 and it's still around.

Musical.ly

The app that most closely resembled Vine with its emphasis on videos that ranged from fifteen seconds to one minute quickly found fame among teens as a karaoke app with 100M active users.

But reports that Facebook was eye an entrance into karaoke led Musical.ly to merge with another app focused on short videos based in China in August 2018 - TikTok.

In August 2018, Musical.ly officially rebranded itself to TikTok and its meteoric rise began. At the end of 2018, the app had surpassed 300M monthly active users.

You may be wondering - is TikTok a copy of Vine then? No, not exactly I'd say. It has a significant amount of overlap to Vine:

• It focuses on short form video ranging from ten to thirty seconds

• Genres of videos vary from lip syncing popular or newly popular tunes (i.e. Old Town Road), dance, comedy, drama or special effects

• Creator focused community meaning regular people can post their content and be paid for it (i.e. Nurse Holly Grace)

• The loopback feature that restarts the video immediately upon its end

In all seriousness, what I find interesting about TikTok is that it transcends most genres and the videos appear to be randomized. For example, on its homepage, where I spent a majority of my time, the user is exposed to a diverse set of content. During a five minute sitting, I saw videos that varied from:

• An engagement proposal

• A bizarre arm challenge

• A girl pouring water and soap on her feet and then pretending to run on a treadmill (spoiler alert - she fell on her face)

• A man farting on a workout machine

• A crazy user doing a flip onto a swing set (yes, seriously)

Sadly, no cat videos… :(

Note - The Verge created a cheat sheet on TikTok - a great resource for first time users

However, I'd be remiss if I did not point out some key differences between the app and the team that runs TikTok - ByteDance.

Unlike Vine which was founded by three young entrepreneurs - Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, TikTok was founded by a burgeoning entrepreneurial giant, Zhang Yiming who raised $75B in venture funding.

Mr. Zhang is not just a giant because of his fundraising capabilities but the overall size of his empire. ByteDance employs over 40,000 - for perspective, that's more than Facebook's employee base. The company is stacked with talent and controversy - with developers from Tencent, Baidu and representatives from the Communist Party of China.

ByteDance owns and operates more than 20 applications across multiple industries - e-commerce, search, streaming, education, literature and social. TikTok occupies a small spot in their growing ecosystem while Vine was a primary draw for Twitter users.

And perhaps the most important difference between Vine and TikTok is the use of algorithms. In every article that I read on TikTok, all authors pointed to this omniscient like algorithm which supposedly adapts the videos it presents to you based upon your previous viewership in the app, making the experience more tailored to you every time.

You may be wondering why a tailored experience is so radical - it's important because today many apps are dependent upon users telling them what they like - i.e. tapping the "like" or "follow" buttons on a video. All are actions that "you," the user have to take. In this case, the app is no longer dependent upon the user providing feedback - it looks at viewing behavior (what you search for, how long you watch certain videos, etc.) to select content for the user.

This formula appears to be working based upon their rapidly growing user base, the amount of time its users spend on the app (averaged 46 minutes per day as of April 2019) and the number of ad agencies setting up shop in the app. None of the apps mentioned above have posted the same level of growth as TikTok.

But, interestingly, we may come full circle…literally. In 2018, Dom Hofmann (co-creator of Vine) announced he was building a "spiritual successor to Vine" called "byte." The app recently released a beta to a small user community.

Whether or not Byte can replicate the success of its brethren, Vine, remains to be seen (although this blogger thinks it will be mighty difficult). However, many obstacles remain in TikTok's path. It's not easy remaining #1. More on that next week!