TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

Can you find interesting video(non funny) on tik tok ?

For example if your interested in bike, can you find cool bike related stuff ? Or is it just some people doing funny thing with some music on it ?

I tried it a few months ago and found only funny videos.

It's cool but it's not what's going to create a account on it.

I like Instagram or YouTube because I can follow thing I'm interesting in.

Because one app is more used doesn’t mean other apps aren’t useful.

My impression is that it is a quick, simple, but extremely effective medium for artistic expression.

In a sense it is very pure; it is not about anything specific and, more importantly, it is not about showing a fake, happy, successful version of yourself.

While I am too old to participate in it, as a medium it looks more healthy in term of living with your online persona (compared to insta-models and travel vlogging).

> It's cool but it's not what's going to create a account on it.

The reason to create an account would be not to watch videos but to make videos. In that tiktok feels a bit like a teenager version of a twitter, youtube chimera.

I've started seeing more cooking clips that are actually pretty well made and work well on the medium. If more content creators of various interests adopt it as a platform, it might be worthwhile.

You can search for things, and you can follow accounts that post things you're interested in. For example, I follow several accounts that show clips of renovating homes, or using power tools in interesting ways, or interesting construction techniques, etc.

> [..] as a medium it looks more healthy in term of living with your online persona (compared to insta-models and travel vlogging).

I think that is the core to its success (and was for Vine). Instagram became a platform for people to promote themselves or some product and people are fully aware of that nowadays.

I just took a trip through the "trending" page and all I saw were dog videos, people showing off how awesome, happy or cool they were, and a couple tutorials.

None of that says "real" to me. It was all about showing how happy and successful they were.

In my own, very subjective, experience. It seems more people are "real" on Tik Tok. I just opened up the app, and the second video I saw, was a young woman talking about her Alopecia (an auto-immune disease that causes hair loss). I've seen similar videos about Scoliosis and Autism and lots of other issues people face. There are also a lot of queer creators on Tik Tok (though the company has had ongoing issues with removing queer content).

Tik Tok isn't free from toxic behavior or those problems with insta-models and travel vloggers by any means, but my impression has been that it's a surprisingly friendly and welcoming community, especially compared to a lot of other social networks

In the videos I saw in general (again, not my thing, so a limited experience) there is a difference in production value.

On Instagram there is a tendency to push for that one perfect photo, on tiktok it looks like there is more a push for content. (obviously there is a continuity between them)

Especially with the "reply" functionality (I don't know how it is called, but you can reply to other users's video by making your own video that will appear the the side) the posts are often in the style of commentary.

In terms of online persona, on tiktok it is almost natural to post a video of your pimples/acne as funny video while on IG it would feel strongly out of place.