Is TikTok an Opportunity for Publishers?

If you’re over 35, spend and hour or two on the social media sensation TikTok, and leave feeling befuddled, don’t worry. I think that is part of the point. In fact, clueless oldsters have become a sub-genre within this short-form, looped video social network. There are clips of teens (the core user base) torturing their parents with weird questions and diatribes, parents embarrassing their kids by aspiring to become TikTok stars themselves, thirty-somethings trying to bust a move to a background soundtrack and declaring themselves too old for the platform. In other words, part of the gestalt of TikTok is the inside joke about its basic inscrutability. On the surface, the looped video format reminds me of the short-lived Vine. It’s filled with pranks, because apparently a lot of people still fall for the Diet-Coke-and-Mentos routine. There are also tons of magic tricks and optical illusions. And celebrities like Will Smith have taken to the platform. But the bulk of the content is a new wave form of karaoke and everyday people showing off their best dance moves—often synchronized or in response to other posts and ongoing challenges posed by the app. It feels like a cacophony of random content—a testament to how radically the social media experience breaks from 20th Century media’s focus on polish, fluidity and coherence. Linearity is so '80s. But what distinguishes TikTok from most of its social media predecessors is that the randomness of the content is part of the... Continue reading at 'Folio Magazine'

[ Folio Magazine | 2019-10-22 14:28:01 UTC ]

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