Content density: Why TikToks trounce Stories

It’s ultimately a math question: are you more likely to find compelling content from the few hundred people in your social network, or from the millions of people posting on the service? The answer is obviously the latter, but that answer is only achievable if you have the means of discovering that compelling content, and, to be fair to both Facebo... See more

The effectiveness of the TikTok experience is found in what it doesn’t require. Unlike Twitter, TikTok doesn’t need a critical mass of famous or influential people to use it for its content to prove engaging. The short-video format grabs the user’s attention at a more primal level, relying on visual novelty, or a clever interplay of music and actio... See more

But for younger generations—especially those who grew up with mobile—there’s a fuzzier line between content creator and content consumer. On YouTube, about 1 in 1,000 users produced content, a huge improvement from TV; on TikTok, it’s accelerated to more like 1 in 4. For younger people, user-generated content platforms are more natural: the user ca... See more