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Comment by thekyle | Hacker News Reader

I do expect TikTok to lose users after Microsoft acquires it. But not because of anything Microsoft might do. TikTok just seems like a fad social network that will inevitably lose the cool factor eventually.

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I'm not so convinced. Let me first say, I can't stand TikTok and find its constant stream of annoying music angering.

That out of the way, my wife and daughter love it, and I can see why. It made it easy for anyone and everyone to share clips, with a touch of social. It makes YouTube look like a slow bloated dinosaur. I just don't see people giving it up.

I mean Vine was the same concept and died due to lack of profitable monetization model.

How does TikTok earn money?

There’s an ad when you return to the app. Since you’re expecting a full screen video to auto play, they often aren’t out of place. You can skip them immediately as well.

Besides ads, one would think there’s endless ways to monetize a strong fun brand.

> one would think there’s endless ways to monetize a strong fun brand

YikYak, Tumblr, and Vine come to mind, and that's just social media space.

When you start free, monetizing in a way that doesn't totally destroy goodwill from your existing customers is tough.

I don't really see the comparison to those apps, though. None were nearly as big as musically/tiktok. I think it's unfair to even compare it to Vine, which is featureless in comparison.

If you ask me, ads with the ability to pay a monthly fee to remove them is the ideal situation.

TikTok has become too top heavy with its current creators. Its most popular stars not only live together but have conglomerated to form their own talent agency as well.

You may not see it on your feed, but millions of middle schoolers seem to be highly invested in the drama that goes on between these people. These creators and their followers is what as known as “straight TikTok”.

What’s to stop them from demanding the big bucks from Microsoft or leaving for another platform?

Name is Charlie da melio. Thank me later

This is rather common knowledge. I don’t really understand your comment. For what am I supposed to thank you? And why later?

Tumblr did just fine for years after the Yahoo acquisition

Til the part where Yahoo asked Tumblr to clean up its act in a gambit to make it actually profitable with advertising.

It’s hard to tell, the same could definitely have been said for insta and snapchat, but also loads of apps that didn’t make it, so it’s a bit of a crapshoot.

I'm not sure but I get the feeling that Snapchat is on the decline. Their killer feature was stories but now every app has those (notably Instagram stories seem very popular).

Instagram is also in the process of knocking them off. That didn't work out so well for Snap.

Eh, Snap managed to kneecap themselves with an extremely controversial UX redesign shortly after Instagram stories, and this was an app that had a notoriously bad UX to begin with.

Snap was also not doing well outside the US, but I haven't heard anything like that about TikTok.

Snap seems to be doing just fine, with a share price up 150% since the virus lockdowns began. FB shares are also up, but only half as much.

Most users will never feel any change despite who owns it, unless MS pull a FB and inject multiple streams of ads into it overnight.

Not to mention the psychological effects it has. Research has shown Instagrams rise strongly correlated with rise in teen suicide rates. TikTok seems worse. Only a matter of time before people realize it's like cigarettes if not worse.

Could you please point me towards said research?

I heard it from Jonathan Haidt.

Tweet: https://twitter.com/jonhaidt/status/1083018993991077888?lang... Study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2664031

Thank you!

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI6rX96oYnY

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