Sublime

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

In the summer of 2019, D’Amelio was a 15-year-old teenager living in suburban Connecticut. She downloaded TikTok and posted her first video. Less than 12 months later, she became the most-followed person on TikTok with ~40 million followers (she has 91 million today).