This video-sharing social media platform, TikTok, came out of nowhere in 2016 and has become quite popular since. That is, youngsters prefer using TikTok videos more than Facebook and Instagram combined. The novelty of the platform and how it helps videos get viral and people get famous is more than lucrative. But, how exactly does TikTok choose whom to make famous?
The TikTok Campaign of Youngsters
The app was launched initially in 2016 and 2017 for iOS. This platform is owned and managed by a Chinese firm called ByteDance, and only in 2017, that is, three years ago, it was made available outside of the country. Youngsters are hooked to this in 2020 made available via App Store and Play Store outside China.
- As of 2019, Datareportal found that TikTok has over 500 million users worldwide.
- Most of its users originate from Asian countries where Facebook has already reached a peak.
- The TikTok has seen over 1.5 billion downloads till 2019 according to SensorTower.
The Moderator who Decides whom to Make Famous
The TikTok systems are based on certain-biases and its algorithms are not completely transparent to the public. So much so that it is the most extensive content moderation system that has ever existed as a social media platform. They build the system considering this right from the beginning. The status quo on moderation has been improving rapidly as user-generated content needs to be checked and verified for a lot of reasons. For example, 4chan has little to no moderation.
As a consumer, you might not even be aware of things that are being filtered out constantly. From a product perspective, TikTok dance videos are a major contribution to its content. This fills the ?Contextual? category of notifications that are shown to users. Google Search is a search engine and belongs to the ?Search? category while Netflix is a good example of the ?Browse? category. These categories predict what types of algorithms are working behind the scene and how moderation is affecting who gets to become famous within a night.
Social Media can Influence Public Opinions
TikTok is currently the most popular video-sharing platform among youngsters and because of the most extensive moderation of content, ?Discovery? of new or novel types of content remains mostly out of the bubble for most people. The algorithm feeds the content that is inherently deemed more profitable and more user-likable. Only those are available to the public in a boosted sense and most people are recommended these on a serial basis.
TikTok generates a huge volume of content daily but only some get popular and viral while others don’t do so well. Other platforms like Facebook or Instagram also have some forms of this moderation to enhance profits, but TikTok’s design makes it profitable right from the start. This is the reason why it has grown tremendously in a very short period.
Conclusion
TikTok videos are fun, easy to make, and allows people to share short clips in no time. Further, they are easy to share and TikTok itself does the rest.