The Ledger
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CCP Launders Anti-Data Center Campaigns Through TikTok, Asserts Gavin Baker
“Like there is an organized CCP funded campaign. I think against data centers here in America. Like I think a lot of it gets laundered through TikTok and it's just tragic because the other thing that's happening is this is re-industrializing America.”
Gallagher: CCP-influenced ByteDance control over US news platform borders on suicide
“To allow a company, ah, that is owned by ByteDance, which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, to be the dominant news platform for the next generation of Americans, I think borders on, on national suicide.”
Best: TikTok is a Chinese slot machine harmful to democracy
“The elephant in the room is TikTok. It's like this Chinese run slot machine game thing. And the type of people that are attracted to making that thing are not necessarily the ones that are going to Make for the strongest democracy, right?”
Kuyda: Shareable mini-apps will replace raw text prompts in AI creation
“Instead of that, if you could just quickly, you know, click on the link in comments on TikTok and open a mini app Where everything's already set up for you, just add a photo. And you can see examples, you can choose different styles and this and that, and then…”
Rabois: Social graphs are no longer defensible moats for platforms
“Well, I don't think the graph is defensible. I think there are other assets that are. I think the graph has kind of been weakened by, like TikTok has kind of shown that on social products, The graph may, certainly isn't, is not indispensable to success. It may…”
Andreessen: Youth media preferences follow a barbell of short or long content
“The cliche of our time is that attention spans are collapsing, and this is the rise of social media and TikTok and short form video. And so the cliche is, you know, and you hear this constantly as, you know, kids only want to watch two minute videos and the wh…”
Roy Lee: Tech workers on X and LinkedIn misunderstand video algorithms
“I think it's growing increasingly clear that people on ex-LinkedIn are behind, and there's such a very, extremely small intersection of people who understand how developed the algorithm is on, like, Instagram, TikTok, and people on tech, like, Twitter, LinkedI…”
Gallagher: TikTok will not go public in US under ByteDance ownership
“If you are invested in ByteDance, I would assume you want TikTok to go public in America. Ah, that's not gonna happen under the current ownership structure.”
Piff Marti: Streaming platforms dilute music quality by demanding constant content
“And the goal of all of these platforms, like Instagram, TikTok, Spotify Apple Music, is to have users use their app as long as possible. And what they encourage the creators to do is give them a bunch of things that these users can consume. But because of that…”
Startups are intentionally archiving viral TikToks to throttle unmanageable app downloads
“And so we've seen actually a few startups I've talked to recently have started limiting their own virality, which sounds impossible because virality is theoretically organic. But what they'll do is if a video starts performing too well on TikTok, it gets too m…”
Karen X Cheng: Low-Effort Viral Creators Fail to Secure Major Brand Deals
“The people who are putting out low effort content all the time, getting millions of views, they're not the ones getting hired by like, Major respected brands. You know, they're not actually getting great opportunities off of their follower count.”
George: ChatGPT daily users average 30 minutes per day
“Active daily active users of chat GPT are ready today. Spend like 30 minutes at 20, 28, 29 minutes a day on the product. And, you know, to put that into context, I think Instagram's like 50 minutes a day and, you know, tick tock like Sadly, it's like 70 minute…”
George: Consumer AI reached one billion users faster than any predecessor
“We've now gotten to the point where there's about a billion monthly active users of consumer AI applications, and this has grown significantly faster than predecessor companies, Google, Facebook, TikTok, and in the case of TikTok, they actually grew through, t…”
Plagemann: Legacy brands like Vogue made Instagram and TikTok cool
“Brands like Vogue and other brands, like really, really great brands actually helped make Instagram as cool and as great as it is. And the same thing with Tik Tok.”
Moore: TikTok's native one-click in-app marketplace will be incredibly powerful
“And so when you think about TikTok, as they've been hinting at, Layering in kind of an in-app marketplace where you could do that in one click, where your payment information is saved, your shipping information is saved, you can order it directly from the vide…”
TikTok creators use Subway Surfers split-screens to retain short attention spans
“It turns out that especially Gen Z users but all ages have started kind of split screening TikTok videos because people have such short attention spans. So they'll put the real video on top, or they'll put, you know, the voiceover on top, and then they'll put …”
Acharya: Major Social Networks Prevent Startups from Piggybacking for Distribution
“All of the sort of existing networks have been so trained on the methodology of building new networks that they're very careful to ensure no one does it on their networks. So Instagram, TikTok, X, it's very hard to build a new sort of distribution channel off …”
Acharya: People open smartphone apps to satisfy specific emotional states
“I've always had this theory that people open apps on their phone because they want to feel a feeling. You know, and I think, of course, there's some like functional set of needs, which is why you open calendar or something. But I also think that, you know, Wha…”
Roy Lee: Instagram requires more controversy for virality than X
“And this is something that I've said before, but I guarantee, like, my videos do not go as viral on Instagram, like, Instagram TikTok. And the sole reason is because on those platforms, they are not controversial enough.”
Khalaf: Average US adults use payment cards more daily than TikTok
“I'll give you a stat. So right now the most addictive product, well, according to the Senate and the Congress, right, is, ah, TikTok. And if you look at its usage, adjusted for the U.S. Population reach, adult population, is 2.1 times a day. But a payment card…”
McFedries: TikTok creators compete globally, not just in their social graph
“And so, effectively, if you're creating media on TikTok, right, like, you're not even competing for attention in your following, in your social graph. Like, you're competing against the globe.”
Chan: Incumbent social platforms will expand into e-commerce to drive ad revenue
“I think a lot of these large Platforms are all going to figure out they want to dabble into commerce, and there's so many benefits if they do that. It actually drives their advertising engines, because now that you have a commerce layer, the supply generally i…”
Moore: Building a startup audience on TikTok will get progressively harder
“It's probably harder to build an audience on TikTok, especially as a startup, than it was a year and a half ago or two years ago, and it'll get harder and harder over time.”
Sivak: Spellbreak community TikTok adoption jumped to 60% in six months
“We ask like, you know, what social networks do you use? And I think it's grown from like only 12 or 14% of our community to like 60% of our community are now on TikTok or just over the last six months.”
Sivak: Video Games Compete Directly With Netflix, Facebook, and TikTok
“You're competing with everyone. You know, you're competing with Netflix, you're competing with you know, with Facebook and TikTok.”
Sivak: Game word-of-mouth happens via social media GIFs, not office chatter
“The water cooler moments that people used to share in the office, where they would say like, hey, you know, I was playing this cool game, or I fought this cool boss, no longer exist. They're all getting shared as animated GIFs now, whether it be through TikTok…”
Steve Zhao: Sandbox VR guest TikTok clips reach up to 15M views
“Nowadays, people are splicing our videos and putting it on TikTok, and we're getting like, ten million views, fifteen million views, and it turns out that what we created was sort of an expression that they can use to, you know, to showcase themselves and the …”
Moore: TikTok reviewer Keith Lee generates tens of thousands in instant business revenue
“There's so many stories out there now, if you Google him of businesses that were really struggling and he was able to generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for them in just one or two days.”
Russian app Travelboast hit #1 in US after gaining 500M TikTok views
“There's one app that hit number one this year called Travelboast. Which is kind of an interactive map where you can visualize all the places you've been. It originated in Russia, but it ended up with five hundred million views on TikTok because people globally…”