Vine founder launches TikTok competitor
byte.co
byte.co
Look at the beginnings, it was disgusting, but they were there patiently spending money to convince the generation that now with 18-21 already believes that Instagram is just a stronghold of retirees and no community.
They now feel part of something unique because getting on Instagram meant competing against those who were already established. Every social network must be focused in this way. Today TikTok attracted all the big stars, and the Instagram generation is really asking themselves, what is going on? (same question snapchat users did back then), the truth is TikTok is eating Instagram at some big pace and it will take it over completely soon.
Do you want to create a new social network? Aim for the 11-15 year old population and in 3-4 years you will have the strongest, most faithful and active community.
This seems a bit hyperbolic. TikTok had 500M users last I checked, whereas Instagram has 1B users. Instagram’s growth rate was very similar to TikTok’s and remains while having an additional 500M. When TikTok’s growth rate saw a large increase, so did Instagram’s growth rate.
In addition, free marketing is straightforward on insta, it is not even remotely so on TikTok.
Regarding app usage and downloads:
- 2X Better User Retention
- No. 3 most downloaded app in Google Play ahead of Facebook and Instagram
- Most download app in Apple store for 5 quarters
- Growing 1000% YOY
It presents an entirely different vibe than the other services you mention and is useful for different kinds of interaction and discovery. It’s simply really engaging and enjoyable for people to use.
Also the reference to “attracted big stars” seems confusing to me. The genius of the platform so far has been that it’s genuinely possible to participate as a normal person and a lot of the other content is created by actual peers of most users. As the stars and celebrity phenomenon grows there I think we’ll see the platform start to deteriorate.
Sorry, but social networks are made of people, without the people you don't have a product. He's trying to say that because important people create the community then that's the most important thing to the product in this case. Trying to say that the product creates the people makes no sense.
The whole notable thing about Tik Tok is that “important” people didn’t create the culture. It was created mostly by high school age kids sharing music and dance videos.
I guess the premise is that since Tik Tok deliberately sought that market... the success doesn’t count somehow... or something?
I mean like the entire planet is trying to market to that demographic. Nearly everyone fails. The distinguishing feature of Tik Tok here is that it’s a great well designed social product that’s fun to use and viral.
Open, and you're immediately fed content with no interaction required. Not happy with what you see? Swipe.
It targets an audience where any obstacle, which includes as much as a button press, might lead to them checking some other app instead.
Sorry but this is just not a useful argument. Every product that targets this demographic is good because it targets this demographic? Face it, everyone is trying to appeal to these consumers, and most fail. Tik Tok did it very successfully, and merits some consideration for having done it in a crowded and competitive space, as did snapchat at some point in time.
This is an insane reply, nothing about that post made it sound like they thought otherwise.
>He's trying to say that because important people create the community then that's the most important thing to the product in this case.
That's not what the grandparent said at all. He was saying almost the opposite, that Tiktok owes its success to "...its strategy to take on the world with the freshest possible generation of users..." whom it wooed by offering a fresh social media environment, free of important people, where they wouldn't feel like they were "...competing against those who were already established."
Their core point was that TikTok's success was because of its marketing strategy, not because of its features, which is what the person you replied to was contesting. No one was arguing against whatever strawman you were building with quotes.
The thing people miss about why TikTok (and WeChat for that matter) are so good is that they're born in the gladiatorial world of the largest and most competitive mobile app market in the world that is China. I know my marketers there work with not just douyin (the original Chinese app of TikTok) but also 4-5 other short video platforms. The pace of innovation in Mobile apps in China is something not matched anywhere else in the world.
Excellent synopses. However, how do you stay relevant? After all, the 18 year olds grow up to be 35 year olds.
It's hard. I was a youth worker for a bit. Anything I tried to get them to corporate in they rebelled because it was a "grandpa" thing.
Attention spans just don't exist nowadays. Spending five minutes explaining the manual of a game is over. They won't listen and get bored very quickly even if you get a round in. TikTok appears to mitigates that as you can do your thing in a matter of seconds.
Even the younger adult leaders were struggling to get them engaged. At least football's still a thing.
You don't. The hip, new thing gets recreated every 5-10 years.
I don't think they're doing it again though, many recent acquisitions (starting from Oculus in 2014) are VR/AR based, and AFAIK they're growing the core Facebook product instead of launching new ones.
TikTok and Musical.ly achieved their base of very young people who now all at 17-23 years old already feel that it is their default social network. Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are in a downward spiral because the new generations will only join TikTok as the big celebrities will go where their potential audience is.
(Don’t remember the exact details, but I recalled being surprised at seeing their spend per user/retention rates on an app trend analysis site a year or two back.)
Source? Interested in their early marketing breakdown.
And why did Vine shutdown? How do you fail at user-generated content that you can sell ads and more on?
I ask because I still run blogs that are < 5% of the size they used to be, but still make me $50/month with zero effort in static mode. So why would I stop?
Also, a lot of the popular viners wanted to be paid in some way, and they didn't really have a clear way for that to happen, so the creators pulled out and it died.
TikTok just did it better. Creators can easily get paid, videos are not forced to be 6 second max, and they executed better.
https://rickyyean.com/2020/01/20/from-socialcam-to-tiktok-ho...
- byte sticks to the very strict 7s limit while TikTok is a bit loser
- TikTok's use of music and re-used sounds help bring popular "trends"
- As per the above, you can quickly browse other tiktok's made from the same sound / in the given trend
- TikTok has other interesting features too such as duos, letting you reply to someone else's video, side-by-side
- TikTok's are very easy to share, and most importantly have a Web UI
- TikTok doesn't require an account, as soon as you open the app, you're dropped right into a feed of interesting videos, easy to scroll
These platforms are all about content, and TikTok having penetrated the US means it'll be very hard for byte to get users, and without users there's no content.
I personally don't think Vine really failed per-se. Twitter just didn't think it was a place worth investing, so they stagnated. TikTok as mentioned above has brought many new interesting evolutions to the format.
Most importantly, their learning based feed is pretty top notch and learns your taste very quickly.
Such social media apps are extremely hard to overtake due to the critical mass effect, and that's the reason why Facebook still stands after all this time. Even sites that are strictly better than Facebook often fail due to not having enough users, let alone those that are worse. Unless there's a very strong incentive for users to use byte over TikTok, there's no way it will survive.
The official launch is the one time a bunch of people may give you the benefit of the doubt and try your app, and if you fall so short on the first impression, most people will probably never give it another try. And again, without users, there's no content, and without content, there's no users.
TikTok's penchant for censoring content may be the opportunity Byte needs.
The real killer is the dances on the music. They don't have to invent a new topic every time. They just see a music video they like, and imitate it. Together with all the effects it's very easy to create a crazy video with basically nothing.
One example of an early "dance" was the Boss Walk. This one is almost completely gone now but it was essentially an inside joke to people who followed the content of the platform.
Another thing special to TT is that it was successful at sucking content in from other platforms, including Instagram, and then having that be remixed via the audio under unclear licensing terms. A good example of this is the "oh shit it's a rat" meme.
Once the meme makes it into the blood of the userbase, it doesn't even need the audio and it can take on a life of its own leaving behind most content origination though the audio stays.
The most impactful example was definitely Old Town Road, and the jump / costume changes. This song was huge on the platform and already waning before it made it onto billboard and exploaded mainstream
On tiktok, if 3 of your friends make the same video, the cool thing is to also do the same one.
I don’t think Ive ever seen that in an app before.
> Unfun fact, Colin Kroll, one of the founders of Vine and HQ Trivia died of a heroin overdose a while ago.
I wonder if Byte accidentally gated "Sign In with Apple" to iOS 13. I wouldn't be surprised if App Store review just didn't bother to check how it ran on older versions of iOS.
Compare this with TikTok which first have sign up or in when you are posting something.
Pros and Cons list for using 3rd party login ONLY
Pro: user doesn't need to sign up, just logs in
Con: If your account is terminated by the third party for any reason then it can't be used to log in anymore. YouTube recently terminated peoples google accounts for using emoji's over and over again in a live stream after the streamer told them to do so for example.
Con: If the user closes their account on their own accord for that third party site they can't log into your site anymore either.
Con: If the third party terminates the developers account for any reason then no users can log in at all!
So yeah, if you're designing a website/app/anything with a login system, please please please always allow a user to create an account on your system too. It's fine if you want to give the user who don't care the option to log in via the third party, but I and many others will flat out not use your service.
Not saying it is enough to counterbalance or a good excuse for a company with resources, but I think it's a valid pro.
Realistically, I think it doesn't matter that much? (Not that you ever want to throw users away, but in terms of "sink or swim") Their initial user-base is all the people who have been watching vine collections for years, and that gives the platform a strong start.
I mean 1 byte = 8 bits after all.
Missed opportunity.
Actually, a byte could and did have a variety of bits as they were generally hardware dependent. Generally, a byte is the smallest number of bits that a hardware can process. The most popular bytes early on were 4 bits and especially 6-bit bytes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#6_bit
Octets ( 8 bit bytes ) became widely adopted after IBM went with octets in the 1960s and the industry basically followed and octets became so ubiquitous that byte and octet became synonyms. It's similar to how google became a synonym for internet search ( "you can just google it" ) or how coke became a synonym for soda in parts of the world.
So while it is widely accepted that a byte is 8 bits, but technically, it isn't true. Octets are 8 bits and most/all bytes in the world are octets. But it doesn't necessarily have to be so. Octets always have to be 8-bits, but a byte doesn't.
Apologies for the unsubstantive comment of my own here. I felt like an upvote wasn't enough to show my appreciation.
French speakers do not use "byte" but "octet". If you look at French websites they use ko, mo, and go.
VCs: "Where do we wire the money?"
VC: Please take our money.
Elon: I have this next great idea. *pandemonium results in 4 deaths as VCs get crushed by the crowds
Unfortunately, that's the anti-answer. He doesn't seem to have ideas.
I think this was a perfect moment for him to pitch his idea.
VC spend money if they are convinced of the team, which includes the team having a valid idea of the market and the challenges.
First, when it comes to messaging friends and connecting with people most college kids uses Snapchat. I am in a big college and everyone at my university uses Snapchat for messaging. I believe that it is smart for Snapchat to default on camera when opening the app this way it keeps the distraction away and you can focus on whatever you were planning to do like reading a message plus it is a good privacy oriented platform.
Second, when it comes to being silly and occupy boredom, kids are using tiktok. TilTok has a great recommendation algorithm. Sometime, if I don’t pay attention I can spends hours on the app. TikTok became a safe space for younger generation, where they don’t need filters and photoshop to be part of a community.
Here is a great article in WSJ about TikTok
https://www.wsj.com/articles/help-im-trapped-inside-tiktok-a...
Out of all names, they chose Byte?
And TikTok is made by ByteDance.
Edit: if this thing blows up, I predict Facebook will buy it.
Something that just resonates with me. The UI is very nice too, big and bold.
"Byte gives conspiracy theorists and rightwingers a platform. It's our moral duty to censor it." - WSJ, WaPo, NYT and friends in about five years.
How many times will we reiterate the same core ideas?
Is a new way to share videos, pictures, and text innovation?
We can so so much more.