WEBVTT - Time for TikTok 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from My Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.840 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.000 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.680 and I love all things tech and get off my lawn. 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:24.639 You know, as I get older, I have to work 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.320 harder to keep up with trends in tech. I mean, 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:30.880 I find that the stereotypes about old people getting out 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:34.159 of touch with new tech are at least for me, 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:38.720 partly true. I love tech and I do try to 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:42.240 stay up to date with news, but some trends appear 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.000 and I'm a little slow on the uptake. And I 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.919 would say that holds true with TikTok, the insanely popular 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.440 video app and meme generator extraordinaire. And that's kind of 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.560 funny because I was at least semi aware of it 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.800 on some level before it was even TikTok. So in 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.000 this episode, we're gonna look into the app, the company 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.039 that owns the app, the people who developed it, and 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:09.399 the controversies surrounding it, as well as the culture that 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:13.080 has grown up around it. And it's all pretty fascinating stuff. 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:18.800 There's actually a couple of origin stories for TikTok because, 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.120 as it turns out, TikTok is the product of some 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:26.680 acquisitions and mergers of other apps. Let's start by taking 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:29.760 a look at the company Byte Dance, which as of 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.560 this recording still owns TikTok. More about that later in 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:37.000 this episode. And that story really begins with its founder, 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:42.200 a Chinese entrepreneur named Jeong ye Ming. Now I'd say 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.479 that Jong has kept a pretty low profile in the West. 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.320 In fact, to dig up some info on him, I 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:50.720 really had to pull up some articles that were written 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.640 in Chinese, and then I had to rely heavily on 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:57.120 Google Translate. So with that in mind, we have to 0:01:57.160 --> 0:01:59.400 take a lot of what I've got to say with 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.000 a few grains of salt for two big reasons. One, 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:09.160 journalism in China is not exactly objective. The state, that is, 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.560 the Chinese Communist Party, often plays a very big role 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:17.720 in that, and so the truthiness of a piece can 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.200 come under question. Second, the translation algorithms that we depend 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:26.400 upon today, they sometimes fail to capture more subtle linguistic 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:30.280 elements like idiom or you know, metaphor. Similarly, so some 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:33.680 stuff does get lost in translation. So with that in mind, 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.960 let's see what we can find out now. According to 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:40.200 the Chinese website so Who, which is part of a 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:42.760 big internet company that I'll have to cover in a 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:47.680 future episode. Here's what I was able to discover. Jong 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:53.120 initially studied microelectronics, but then switched to software engineering in 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.560 college at non Kai University, and so he was there 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.320 from two thousand one to two thousand five. Upon graduate wation, 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.520 he interviewed with a company called cook Soon, and he 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:07.400 became employee number five over there. Cook Soon got its 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:11.120 start as a meta search engine designed to pull up 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:15.080 train ticket options for travelers in China. It's kind of 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.640 like how search services like hotels dot com or booking 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.079 dot com will aggregate deals for various hotels in a 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.399 region so that you can find the one that best 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.160 suits your needs, whether it's for your budget or where 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:31.040 you plan on being or whatever. Over time, the cook 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.120 Soon site expanded its scope, becoming more of a general 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:39.760 search engine for everything from shopping to job positions, and 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:43.680 it would change its focus numerous times, sometimes scaling back 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:47.480 to focus more on the travel industry and sometimes going 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:51.720 more broad. In the meantime, Gen rose rapidly from being 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:55.400 a software engineer to leading teams of engineers who are 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.600 developing the various products that would get rolled out onto 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.760 the site. There's Jong would leave cook soon in two 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:04.160 thousand and eight, and at that point the site had 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:08.600 not yet become profitable, possibly due to this wavering focus 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.040 on what the site actually was about. But it wouldn't 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.400 be the end of his involvement with Cookson the company, however, 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:18.320 we'll get back to that. So in the meantime, he 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:23.599 joined Microsoft, but he found that working for an established 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.839 global company that had a fairly rigid corporate structure was 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:31.159 a very different experience from working in a startup environment, 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.480 and he didn't stick around with Microsoft for very long. 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.840 He would leave that company to join another Chinese company 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:42.560 called fan Fou, which was essentially a clone of Twitter. 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:48.000 It was a short messaging service style social platform device 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.840 that did not necessarily go that smoothly either, though it 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.360 wasn't through any fault of gens necessarily. In the summer 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:58.359 of two thousand nine, a series of riots relating to 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:02.640 China's treatment of ethnic mon noorities erupted in northwest China. 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:05.960 In an effort to clamp down on the situation, the 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:09.960 Chinese government began to restrict communication channels as much as 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.880 they possibly could, and that included the effective shutdown of 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.520 Fanfu and several other Chinese websites, which were to remain 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.960 dark until the spring of Joan. Ye Ming didn't wait 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.280 around for the Chinese government to lift restrictions. Instead, he 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:28.599 left the company and he pounced on what he saw 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:33.000 as an opportunity to have his own start up. Expedia, 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.640 the online travel company, was in talks to acquire Cook Soon, 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.400 Jong's old employer, but as I mentioned earlier, Cook Soon 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.760 had sort of wandered all over the place when trying 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.359 to establish what it actually was, and one business it 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.520 had dipped its corporate toe into was in real estate, 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.680 and that's what Jong was interested in. He arranged to 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:59.120 acquire that part of Cook Soon's business because it wasn't 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:02.880 really a line end with expedia strategy and it wouldn't 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.919 be needed for Expedia's acquisition. It was a part of 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:08.680 the company that wasn't really that interesting to Expedia, so 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.520 Jeong y Ming was able to swoop in and purchase 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.719 that part of the company, and he founded his first 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:18.880 independent company, which he called nine Fong dot Com. A 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.560 couple of years later, Jeong saw a new opportunity, this 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:27.080 time revolving around how people access news. China was lagging 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:29.280 a little bit behind the rest of the world in 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:32.320 this endeavor, but even in China, it was clear that 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.479 mobile devices were completely upending the way people get access 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.560 to information. So with that in mind, Jong resigned as 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:44.640 the CEO of Fong dot com and he founded a 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.240 new company, one that would be known in the West 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:52.240 as byte Dance b y t e Dance. The original 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:56.520 product from byte Dance wasn't a short videos service, nor 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:58.440 did it have anything to do with lip syncing to 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:02.159 songs or generating me eames or anything like that. It 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:06.000 was a news aggregator service, one that would pull headlines 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:10.920 from various Chinese news organizations. The app was called Chao 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.440 Chow and it was a big hit in China, despite 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.640 the fact that Jong initially encountered very little enthusiasm from 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.200 investors for his idea. Bye Dance would launch a video 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:26.120 sharing app for mobile devices called dough yin in China, 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:31.240 but it would be known elsewhere as TikTok and the 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:36.119 app allowed users to create short, like really short video 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.840 clips fifteen seconds long and then share them online. Users 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:43.320 would create lip sync videos. They had access to a 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:46.480 large database of sound bites they could use, or they 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:49.960 might create short comedy videos, or they might show off 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:54.200 odd or impressive talents. The service launched in China in 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:58.600 twenty sixteen. It received a warm reception in China, but 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.680 when they tried to exp and the app outside of 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:06.360 China in Seen, it did not immediately catch on. That 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.920 would change a bit later in seventeen when byte Dance 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.800 would merge its TikTok app with another app called Musical 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:18.200 dot Lee or Musically if you prefer, and that's when 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.520 things would really take off. But that means we need 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:24.280 to chat about musically for a second. And where that 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:28.800 came from. That started as a different Chinese startup, this 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.600 time co founded by friends Alex Shu and Louis Young. 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:37.160 The two originally intended to create a short form video 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:41.040 service meant for educational videos. So these were supposed to 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.320 be things like how to videos or explainer videos, you know, 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:48.160 like how this thing works, videos I can identify with that. 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:51.679 They called their app Cicada, and they pitched it to 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:56.280 venture capitalists back in and investors like the idea, and 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:58.760 they poured about a quarter of a million dollars worth 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:04.960 of cash into the There was only one tiny little problem, 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.360 nobody was using it. They were able to develop the tool, 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.960 they launched the tool, they saw very little adoption, and 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.080 as it turned out, they they realized the reason was 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:21.080 it's actually really difficult to communicate complicated ideas effectively in 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.680 just a few minutes. I mean, I've done that. That's 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.960 been my gig for a while with making short videos. 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.080 I used to do that back with how Stuff works 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:33.400 all the time. So it's hard to do and that's 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:35.600 why you noticed that the average running time for a 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:39.040 tech Stuff episode is closer to like forty five minutes. 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:41.800 It's just it's not easy to boil all that down 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.920 in just a few minutes and make it accurate and interesting. 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.559 So the co founders discovered that people didn't want to 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:53.000 use the app because it took so long to write, produce, 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.839 and edit videos that the return on investment in terms 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.200 of time and effort just weren't there. It wasn't fun 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:03.679 to use. Creation really needed to be more effortless and 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:07.079 have a better payoff, and young folks who were leading 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.280 the way when it came to mobile phone adoption just 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:14.320 weren't into Cicada, so it was not really succeeding. So 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:16.720 the co founders were faced with the problem. They had 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.520 built tools that worked, but they weren't really suitable for 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.040 the purposes that they had in mind. People just weren't 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.280 using it. So they were running out of cash, and 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:28.840 they had a couple of different choices that they could 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:32.199 really follow. They could go back to their investors and 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:34.959 return what little money was left with an apology saying 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:37.800 we built this thing, it works, but nobody's using it. 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:40.440 Or they could attempt a pivot and see if they 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:43.120 could leverage the tools they had already built for some 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:46.599 other purpose. And that's when they decided to give entertainment 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.080 a shot. Now. According to you, he made this decision 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.880 after visiting the United States. He was in Mountain View, California, 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:56.599 according to his story, and saw a group of teenagers 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.360 on a train that were listening to music. They were 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.480 taking self fees and videos with the music in the background, 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.599 and they were using social media apps to add filters 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.439 and virtual stickers on top of the images in the video. 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.800 And he thought, hey, you know, these kids are sharing 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.400 stuff in a really creative way, and they're cluging it together, 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.640 right there. They're doing this by using different things to 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:22.560 try and make something new. If I made a tool, 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:25.640 if I used the stuff we developed for Cicada, and 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.280 I adapted it so that it was all all of 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.480 those elements were together in one app, people would use 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:35.280 it because they're doing it already, but they're doing it by, 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:38.760 you know, kind of piecing it together piecemeal. If I 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:41.319 put it all together, it's gonna be a big hit. Now. 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:43.440 I find it interesting that, at least according to the 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.480 sources I looked at, SHO wasn't inspired by previous short 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.079 form video services like Vine now. Vine was a short 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:54.480 form video sharing service that Twitter had acquired shortly after 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.760 Vine had been founded. Users could create six second long 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:03.120 looping videos. Those videos lived on vines servers, but they 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:07.680 could easily be shared the platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Inteen. 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:11.440 When You and Young were working on their tweaked service, 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.000 Vine was still a thing, though Twitter would shut that 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:21.160 service down in After about a month of making changes 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:24.559 to their original platform, the Cicada team created a new 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:29.040 service that they called Musically or musical dot l y. 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:32.640 Users could create fifteen second long videos with this app. 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.360 They saw some early adoption and user retention, but growth 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.000 was a little slow in the beginning they were running 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:43.720 low on cash when they made some more adjustments, a 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:47.000 big one being that they repositioned the logo so that 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:49.319 it wouldn't get cropped out when the videos would get 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.640 shared on services like Instagram. So that meant that once 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.240 people saw these videos, they could actually see the logo 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.360 for music Lee, and they knew where to go in 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:00.800 order so that they could get the happen and make 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.959 their own videos. And adoption really took off at that point, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.400 particularly in the United States. It did not receive widespread 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:13.439 adoption back in China, but the musically app would hit 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:17.160 number one on the iTunes app Store, which guaranteed that 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:20.440 the app would have a prominent position that helped drive adoption, 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:25.480 particularly in the United States. The music Lee team created 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:28.800 some features that really helped it get attention. One was 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.880 creating a type of tier called Best Fans Forever or 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:38.200 b f F. So if you followed a music Lee creator, 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:42.360 you could become a BFF of that creator who would 0:13:42.800 --> 0:13:45.800 follow you back. Essentially your BFFs with each other. So 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:49.280 let's say two users become BFFs. They could then record 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:54.000 videos of themselves lip sticking to the same song, for example, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:58.080 and music Lee would take these two videos and edit 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:01.839 them together, creating what was called a duet, so it 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.960 would switch back and forth between the two little videos 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:08.280 to create a single experience as long as the two 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.160 users were BFFs of each other. A related feature allowed 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.280 music Lee users to create a video response to another video, 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:19.400 building a chain of videos together, so you could do 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:22.800 a Q and a style format that musically would stitch 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.680 together so then users could see the full thing later. 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.160 They could see the questions and the answers, or they 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.680 could see a video and a response. And these features, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.720 along with the ability to post videos to other popular 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:39.120 platforms like Instagram, meant music Lee had an appeal that 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.960 tapped right into the zeitgeist. Before long, it became a 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.680 launching pad for Internet celebrities as well as musicians who 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:51.280 otherwise we're finding discovery to be an insurmountable challenge. So 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.440 you had music Lee, which was doing well in the 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.960 United States and in Europe as well as several other markets. 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:00.960 And you had du Yen or to Talk, which was 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:06.040 doing well in China but hadn't gained much traction anywhere else. 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:10.000 Jong saw the chance to bring together two similar but 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.000 unrelated services under one company, and so byte Dance would 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:18.320 make its move. When we come back, I'll talk about 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.640 that acquisition and what came next, but first let's take 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:34.680 a quick break. Musically started back in TikTok Or or 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:39.000 du Yan had launched in two thousand sixteen. Byte Dance 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:43.200 was doing incredibly well, largely driven by the enormous success 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:47.000 of the news aggregator service it had built years before. 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.560 Based on funding rounds in China, byte Dance had a 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:56.400 valuation of nearly twenty billion dollars around this time, which 0:15:56.440 --> 0:16:03.240 is in fact and extremely princely some In November, news 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.080 broke that byte Dance was making a move to acquire 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.920 the music Lee service, which itself had been valued at 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.880 nearly one billion dollars. So while I was watching friends 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.680 do silly lips sinking videos to songs from the musical Hamilton's, 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:23.520 these companies were skyrocketing in value. In December seen the 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.200 deal was finalized for an undisclosed amount. Analysts estimate it 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:32.760 was somewhere between eight hundred million dollars and one billion dollars. 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.680 Not a bad take for the developers of music Lee, 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:39.280 who had started out with a failed effort to create 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:43.160 an educational video tool. I really wish my failure is 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.880 paid off like that. Now I'm being a bit snarky, 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:48.200 but I have to point out that the services were 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:52.480 both doing really, really well both before and after Byte 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:57.760 Dance acquired musical Lee. By mid teen, musical Lee had 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:03.280 one hundred million active monthly users. TikTok or du Yan 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:08.280 had five hundred million users in China, and those users 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:13.240 were generating tons of data, and they were watching lots 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:15.040 of ads, and as we all know, this is really 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.480 valuable stuff, particularly when you're looking at it in bulk. 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:21.199 So Byte Dance was sitting on a treasure trove of 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:25.880 information as well as getting lots of money through ad deals, 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:29.200 and it really gave the company an enormous boost in value. 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:35.160 In August, byte Dance announced it was shuttering musical Lee 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.840 as a brand. It was going to go away as 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.520 its own thing, and it revamped the service into TikTok, 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.719 so it unified the name across its two services. However, 0:17:45.800 --> 0:17:48.200 the company would still continue to operate the du Yan 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:53.160 version of TikTok separately on Chinese servers. This was so 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:57.120 the company could adhere to Chinese government requirements. I'll talk 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:59.720 more about that a little later in this episode. So 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:03.120 even though there was a unified Dame, there are still 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:08.160 two distinct, separate incarnations of TikTok to this day. One 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:12.480 month after byte Dance consolidated TikTok, the service reached a 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:17.199 new milestone. In September, it became the top app in 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:23.280 monthly installs in Apple's App Store. It surpassed Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:27.439 and Facebook. It was a social media app on the rise. 0:18:28.119 --> 0:18:31.280 This was a huge deal, and driving this adoption were 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.560 young users who otherwise weren't quite as keen to join 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.720 some of the more established networks out there. Now that 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.320 being said, the user base still wasn't as big as 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.480 something like Facebook, which is a true monolith of a 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:49.080 social platform. When it comes to total users, Facebook remains king, 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.080 but TikTok was seeing much faster adoption than other platforms 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.760 at this time. While all this was going on from 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:59.200 an adoption perspective, there's another aspect we need to address, 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.920 and that's the cultural impact of TikTok. The short form 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:06.160 video restrictions meant people had to come up with creative 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:09.760 ways to make use of that time and of the platform, 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:12.159 and they had to do it in order to stand 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:15.639 out among all the other stuff being uploaded every day. 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:18.960 TikTok culture began to evolve, and soon there was a 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:24.719 TikTok optimized form of storytelling and of humor. TikTok emerged 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.359 at the same time as a generation of kids who 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:31.200 had grown up in the smartphone age, and they were 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:35.720 all becoming teenagers around this time. So smartphones have immersed 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:40.480 us in media like nothing before. Now, my generation would 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.159 spend hours in front of a television every week, and 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:46.960 there were often times that we could easily escape from 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:51.119 mass media if we wanted to just go outside or whatever, 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:53.679 because cell phones were barely a thing when I was 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:57.200 a kid. There was no YouTube or Facebook, there were 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.720 no smartphones. Even digital cameras were in credibly rare and expensive, 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:05.919 and so my generation developed a very different sensibility and 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:10.760 relationship with communication and humor. Now, I don't say that 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:15.919 superior sensibility. I don't think my generation had a better 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.520 version of that than any other generation. I'm just pointing 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:23.800 out that it's different. So you contrast my generation with 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:27.639 the teens of the twenty one century. The Internet and 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:32.080 mobile devices have changed how we experience, consume, and interact 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:36.680 with media. Everything seems pulled into the media realm. People 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:41.560 who would otherwise have led fairly average lives were able 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:45.239 to leverage online tools to become celebrities. They they've been 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:50.080 able to amass fortunes by vlogging or live streaming games 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:55.440 or developing themselves into a brand. It's a totally different landscape, 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.639 and as such, it provides a much different launch point 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:03.159 for humor and communication, and that's what we're seeing on TikTok. 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:07.520 TikTok Let's users share short videos that often end up 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:12.119 being a reflection, commentary, or criticism of some form of 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:17.160 media or cultural idea, and it's easily shared and it's 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:20.480 easily digested. So in many ways, it reminds me of 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.240 how people tend to encounter the news. The twenty four 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:27.680 hour news cycle created a demand for news. You had 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:30.840 to fill up all that time with something if you're 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:34.040 going to be broadcasting twenty four hours a day. And 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.879 then the Internet comes along and took that news cycle 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:42.159 and made it a bazillion times worse. One consequence of 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:44.840 this is that we don't tend to have very long 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:48.280 memories when it comes to big events because we're flooded 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.639 with notifications whenever the next big event happens, and because 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:57.000 the Internet is global, there's always a big event happening somewhere, 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:01.480 so it just becomes this sequence of big events. Well, 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:05.680 TikTok videos kind of taps into that in a little way. 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:10.920 Video creators can become famous. Some may only achieve temporary notoriety, 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:15.000 but other people have launched entire careers from TikTok and 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:19.400 they can make ironic observations about the world and media 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:22.639 and memes that are going on at that time. Most 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.320 videos use a soundtrack taken from established media, such as 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:30.240 a musical artist or a film soundtrack or audio from 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.560 a television show, and so to someone like me, the 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:37.720 videos might appear silly or unimportant because I'm a grumpy 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:41.320 old man. But to a different generation, it's an actual response, 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.240 whether conscious or otherwise, to the environment that they're growing 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:50.680 up in. Also, because these TikTok videos rely so heavily 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:56.240 on identifiable pop culture media, they tend to transcend barriers 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:00.800 like language, so they become really accessible. Oh the the 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.679 tone is really interesting too. There's a sort of self 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:09.240 deprecating humor that runs through a lot of TikTok videos, 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:12.600 which is a stark contrast to how people try to 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:17.000 present themselves on other platforms like Instagram. On Instagram, it's 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:21.080 far more common to see someone present themselves in full 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:24.800 blown self promotion mode, so kind of like, look how 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:27.920 awesome I am, Look how awesome my life is. Look 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:31.160 how awesome these products I enjoy are. Don't you want 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:35.680 these products too? Like? That's kind of the perception of 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:39.840 your typical Instagram personality, right, they are a person who 0:23:39.920 --> 0:23:43.840 are They're presenting themselves as a brand that interacts with 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:49.280 other established brands. Well, a lot of TikTok users seem 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:53.120 to use TikTok in a totally different way. They're using 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:56.560 TikTok in a way to kind of voice their own 0:23:56.560 --> 0:24:00.160 insecurities and to deal with that and to to sort 0:24:00.200 --> 0:24:02.920 of poke fun at themselves in a self aware way, 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:08.160 as opposed to trying to present this kind of idealistic 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:13.119 vision of themselves and on the app that frequently goes 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:17.400 fairly well if you're viewing TikTok through the app, that's 0:24:17.560 --> 0:24:19.840 kind of the vibe you get with a lot of 0:24:19.840 --> 0:24:22.639 TikTok videos, not all of them, by the means but 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:26.800 it's a pretty common thread. But TikTok also has created 0:24:26.840 --> 0:24:29.520 a strange duality. So on the one hand, you had 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:32.679 the TikTok culture of the app itself, and then on 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:36.720 the other you have the culture around TikTok that has 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:40.840 grown out from the way TikTok is presented on other 0:24:41.000 --> 0:24:46.080 platforms platforms like YouTube and Facebook, where people will upload 0:24:46.160 --> 0:24:50.560 collections of TikTok videos, they'll aggregate them much in the 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:54.480 same way as Byte Dances news aggregator would gather headlines. 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:59.240 Many of those compilations popping up on other platforms aren't 0:24:59.440 --> 0:25:02.280 like a best of you know, it's not the best 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:07.200 of TikTok featuring clever users of the app or particularly 0:25:07.240 --> 0:25:12.560 funny jokes. Instead, there are a lot of cringe compilations. 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:17.360 These are videos where something isn't necessarily going well, or 0:25:17.560 --> 0:25:21.639 maybe they're meant to service material for mockery and derision, 0:25:22.240 --> 0:25:25.879 so you're making someone's making fun of another creator. So 0:25:25.960 --> 0:25:29.320 these are two very different experiences. Right on the one hand, 0:25:29.359 --> 0:25:32.239