TikTok’s Secret Sauce

Part of me wonders though if TikTok is helpful in understanding recommendation algorithms and curation, because it’s so blatant. I notice that, especially with younger users, there’s a total understanding that what they’re seeing is not occurring naturally, but is the result of computational choices being made for them.

There have been hundreds of investigative reports, technical analysis, research whitepapers, statistical studies, PhD dissertations, and more about how TikTok’s secretive recommendation algorithm works. TikTok’s recommendation system is without a doubt incredibly complex and impressive, but so too are the recommenders that Facebook, Instagram, and ... See more

Whilst contemplating this situation, my colleague Tom pointed out what I feel is the crux of the issue. TikTok has become the platform for algorithmic recommendation. The general sentiment among anyone I know is that TikTok, more than YouTube, and certainly more than Instagram et al, is phenomenally good at recommending things to you.

The crucial di... See more

When a creator posted a video, TikTok showed it to a sample audience and then expanded to bigger targeted audiences if it did well—a form of a recursive publishing feedback loop. Creators with no followers could still reap rewards for videos that were funny and understandable by anyone. This was uniquely powerful for the medium of short-form video,... See more

This is why TikTok's network effects of creativity matter. To clone TikTok, you can't just copy any single feature. It's all of that, and not just the features, but how users deploy them and how the resultant videos interact with each other on the FYP feed. It's replicating all the feedback loops that are built into TikTok's ecosystem, all of which... See more