TikTok hits 1.5B downloads, outperforming Instagram

The metrics make sense: as a user of both platforms, I'm spending far more time on TT these days than IG. My biggest gripe is Instagram is absolutely filled with ads: you get ads in between stories, ads in between posts, then a good portion of actual posts are "sponsored" (so ads from the posters themselves)... it's just a really bad mire of advertising and people trying to sell me stuff. Meanwhile TikTok is still fairly ad-free (I get an ad while scrolling maybe once every 10 mins?) and the content is just better.

In terms of content: remember when Instagram first became popular, and you started using that more compared to Facebook, because FB just felt "stale" and old while IG was the new and exciting thing, with better and more exciting content? That's basically the different between TT and IG now.

In the past I used IG to interact with people from niche communities (primarily aquarium related) but I left both because it was acquired by Facebook and I was seeing the huge increase of ads and sponsored posts/accounts as you describe.

From what I've seen of tik tok it seems it's mostly young kids and teenagers lip syncing music, dancing, and doing comedy sketches.

Are there communities in tik tok where people from niche hobbies can share information and communicate? If I could join and find other serious aquarium hobbyists, for example, I may actually consider giving tik tok a try but I was under the impression that doesn't really exist or fit the use case for the app

>Are there communities in tik tok where people from niche hobbies can share information and communicate? If I could join and find other serious aquarium hobbyists, for example, I may actually consider giving tik tok a try but I was under the impression that doesn't really exist or fit the use case for the app

Tik Tok doesn't have formal interest groups the way that reddit has subreddits, but there are definitely niche communities that congregate around hash tags. The big ones include visual and audio artists, and there are big pet communities there too. I haven't seen aquarium enthusiasts (mostly because that's not my niche), but I'm sure they're out there. Tik Tok is in the middle of a huge ferret craze because of this cute video of a dancing ferret [1] for example.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QGVytQMUmE

TikTok is the first social medium I don't get. It isn't very good at figuring out my tastes and just serves me generic hot people content. It doesn't try to figure out who I might want to contact with either. Maybe I'm getting old or something.

I hate when social media tries to figure out anything about what I like. Its never correct.

"Oh you liked this one cooking show, well here is 237 more cooking shows!"

You don't like hot people?

They tend to burn my tongue. I prefer them served lukewarm.