The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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The ideal consumer AI interface sits somewhere between chat and TikTok
“Chat makes sense if you're the highest agency person in the world, which is Elon and Sam. But for the average consumer, like their ideal interface is TikTok. So we need to find something between chat and TikTok.”
Mosseri: Earlier Reels launch would have prevented TikTok from becoming as big
“And if we had the version of reels that we launched In like mid, just maybe we think it's like the summer of 20 20, in the summer of 2019. I think, I don't think TikTok isn't, I think TikTok is still big and important, but I don't think it's as big as it is no…”
Snap built a precursor to TikTok but abandoned it over mission
“Snap almost had essentially what is TikTok earlier than TikTok existed and it kind of died out because it didn't align, align with the mission essentially.”
Tavel: Purely anonymous apps fail to build sustainable retention and network effects
“The challenge when you have pure anonymity is that you don't have that accruing benefit or mounting loss that, that happens. I don't know if you ever played with secret, but it's similar to Tik TOK or something like that. These are the types of experiences whe…”
Mosseri: Instagram's recent ranking investments were inspired by TikTok and ByteDance
“So we've invested a lot over the last couple of years in ranking, not just increasing engagement, but increasing originality, increasing the number of pieces of content that break out increasing recency to stay culturally relevant. And so a lot of that has bee…”
TikTok's founding growth team based their early tactics on Sean Ellis's writing
“I met with the original founding growth team at TikTok. They're based in Singapore and they had, I can't remember what the previous product was called, but they started with the previous product. And then when TikTok came, they were in place to be the initial …”
Someone will unlock TikTok B2B SaaS advertising and build a $1B business
“And just because the innovation hasn't happened for B to B SaaS yet on TikTok doesn't mean it won't. TikTok wants that to happen. And so the question becomes how, and so someone will unlock that and they'll make, you know, a billion dollars because of it.”
Rachitsky: Short-form social videos fail to drive meaningful podcast downloads
“So I have TikTok clips, I have YouTube videos and YouTube shorts, and I find they drive followers within the platform and downloads and views, but I haven't seen any actual impact on the podcast. And maybe people can measure it, or maybe they can tell somethin…”
Adding an unverified label and confirmation popup reduced TikTok misinformation shares 24%
“So two things, there was a label on the video, which is kind of classic in the misinformation world where you tell users that it's unverified information. And the second thing was once you click the share button, we popped up something that said, are you sure?…”
Spiegel: TikTok solved distribution by spending billions subsidizing viewers and creators
“TikTok did it with money which I actually thought was really innovative. They spend billions of dollars subsidizing both sides of their video marketplace, right? Acquiring customers to watch videos and then paying creators to make videos. And so they were able…”
Cheng: Social marketing drove 20% to 30% of daily new users at Duolingo
“And then we would track back in the product experience. Like, how did you hear about us? And put all those channels in there. And some days it would be like, holy shit, like it's bringing in 20, 30% of like our new users in any given day.”
Mike Krieger says only ChatGPT and TikTok matched Instagram's consumer scale
“Instagram DAU, which is just an impossible bar. Like only one company since that, maybe two, right. You could say maybe ChatGVT and TikTok have like reached that kind of like mass consumer adoption”
Schwartz: 63% of Gen Z uses TikTok for search
“So in the Google verdict, I think Google's said this before, 63% of Gen Z uses TikTok to search.”
Tavel: TikTok spent over $1B on UA only after achieving retention
“There's one example that we have so far, which is TikTok of spending, you know, more than a billion dollars. Once they figured out Actually the first two levels in order to grow. So they didn't actually put money, like user acquisition spend behind TikTok unti…”
Gotthilf: Viral TikTok presence requires foundational brand DNA, not just talent
“If Duolingo didn't have This unique voice and leaned into the humor and wanted to be irreverent as a brand and was so focused on connecting with people where they were and ready to take risks that might seem, you know, maybe unorthodox in terms of, especially …”
Rachitsky: NPC video game streamers make tens of thousands per day
“They're making, like, tens of thousands of dollars a day just so that's one way to make a living.”
Lenny Rachitsky secretly uses AI-generated voice clones for his TikToks
“We haven't shared this, but a few of the TikToks are my voice generated with AI and they just write a script and it's me reading the story and it sounds sort of like me”
TikTok's ad platform resembles Facebook six years ago, offering cheap CPCs
“Their ads platform kind of reminds me of where Facebook ads was like six, seven years ago. It's not super sophisticated and attribution is not great yet, but you can get cheap CPCs. Because there's just fewer, you know, organizations advertising there.”
Scaling TikTok ad spend to $1M monthly requires massive ongoing creative volume
“You can't really get to like a million dollars a month on TikTok without having like a huge amount of creative being pushed to that channel.”
Meservey: TikTok's algorithm favors new accounts that publish highly consistently at launch
“It actually helps the algorithm. If you come out the gate strong and are really regular. So TikTok, for example, if you're starting at TikTok with zero followers, you want to get a week or two of solid data just in the pipeline so you can hit it, because the a…”
Hutchins: Podcasting lacks algorithmic distribution, making growth inherently slow
“There's no built-in distribution engine in podcasting. TikTok, you make a TikTok video, TikTok sends it to, like, a hundred people, and if no one likes it does, but if, like, a few people like it, they send it to more people, and more people, and YouTube does …”
Grenier: TikTok has crossed the chasm; all marketers should use it
“I feel like TikTok's across the chasm, whereas they actually have a formalized ad platform. Now people are finding scale. There's still a ton to do there and it, You know, influencers is also weird because it crosses all of these other worlds as well, but I th…”
Timen: TikTok reaches high-income older demographics and remains relatively unsaturated
“TikTok has so many users, and it's still so relatively unsaturated with advertisers. That like, your audience is on the, on there. Like, you'd be surprised. Like, you know, I, I've worked with brands that, you know, their core demo is like, 40 plus married, yo…”