Jump to content

Troy is Joining TikTok


Recommended Posts

Okay, I just broke down a begin my first foray into TicTok. Everyone is telling me I need to be on the platform.  So I'm starting in earnest today. I still can't image it helping, but I hope I'm proven wrong.  My goal is to post a short video several times a week.

 

I'm open to any suggestions.  The video is raw, I did not bother to shave or wear anything special -- if I did it would be too much work.  I figure I could invest 15 minutes a week to post a few sub-two-minute videos to the platform. 

 

@aalbccom Introducing the African American Literature Book Club to Tictok #booktok #website #blacktiktok #blackbooktok #readingblack #blacktechnology #blackentrepreneur ♬ original sound - aalbc

 

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Troy

Man....are those your real teeth??
Anyway.....

I'm not sure what's supposed to be so special about TikTok.
What does it have to offer that can't be found on Youtube, Instagram, or the other platforms already in existence?

And I don't care too much for how the volume on those video shorts either can't be changed or maybe I haven't figured out how yet.
 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

LOL, no one is a cap (tooth broken in high school) and I have three veneers to match the cap and close a gap and correct my bite.  

 

Apparently, unlike Twitter, the 'Gram and Facebook, people actually use TikTok platform to discover books through "booktokers." I have never discovered a book that way, but everyone is saying that it is a great way to promote books.  I think my newsletter blows anyway TikTok.  Time will tell.

 

Again, I do not mind being proven wrong.  I could use a free what to promote my brand.

 

Speaking of YouTube, has anyone noticed how shitty is it becoming.  They bombard the videos with ads  -- Increasingly I can't even watch videos for enjoyment anymore. 

 

I assume you can control the volumes on your device to control the volume of the videos. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sure I could control the volume on my phone or computer, but it's not as convenient as just clicking on the video and manipulating the sound from there.

Youtube is flooded with ads but don't worry......TikTok is headed in the same direction and will be there shortly.
Not just with advertisements but with censorship and limiting your content.
We see the same patterns over and over with each platform.

At first they promote ease, catchy gadgets, and freedom of expression....in contrast to the older existing platforms.
And once they get enough people signed up.....THEN the excessive rules and regulations begin and pile on.
Then they'll make you pay a special subscription price just to post and view content that used to be free.

Watch.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brotha @Troy, I hope that platform works out to your advantage. Use whatever it takes to amplify your brand. 

 

As an OG, I've never joined Facebook,  Instagram, Twitter, etc.  Contrary to my presence here, I'm not much of a social media guy in that regard. 😎

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I followed you @Troy

The ban on tiktok isn't about tiktok but really what I call the internet wars. You probably know this as you do development of the website at least but all the major countries and some little one's dabble in meddling online and all to often the firms mask or are being infiltrated for various information gathering or destroying purposes. But, Tiktok is the first major non usa based userbase and thus the usa wants to ban it for until tiktok all major traffic for those who humanity who are online, which isn't all or most, was through a usa company that the usa government was fully in control of accessing their data. Now, the chinese have a foot in the usa and that is an e-war thing. The USA has foots in all the other countries online through usa based firms, but they don't want china or any other country to have a foothold in the usa. Simple. 

 

@Pioneer1 what can be found on tiktok is userbases. ... What you have to comprehend is userbases are currency. What does that mean? If I own a website and it has 60 million users, no bots, it may have 120 million users, including bots but that also means that the popularity of anything on my website will have farther weight than on another website with less uers. sequentially more advertisement money or profiles for organizations to get their messages out or make promotions. 

From forums to yahoo<emai>l to youtube<videos> to facebook<social media post> to twitter<short text> to tiktok<short videos> you have different websites that offered something that gave them a bigger userbase than the past leader. Tiktok has the advantage of being connected to china's internal userbase.

Why does that matter?

When the internet was first developed each country was given country codes. why? The idea was that countries will not be bound to each other and can develop their own internal internets while still connecting to each other. oddly enough, china is the only country to actually implement this in a complete way. yes, most major governments have their own internet, but most countries civilian populaces are not given their own proprietary network to utilize, it is an extension of the usa. 

And thus where tiktok is different. It is the first non usa based major userbase online. 

Yes, I didn't mention the short videos. The short videos was its catch, a very expensive thing which youtube was waiting to do but tiktok made them jump forward. 

 

Well, to your point about freedom of speech, these websites are expensive and they want to reach a wide audience and lawsuits can become messy. The reality is ,many lawsuits involve social media so most firms want to stay as safe as they can and that means restrictions. Tumblr is a great example, that isn't a major player and yet the involvement of the legal system caused shockwaves in that firm. 

 

For a website to allow for truly unfettered free speech they have to have a number of things. 1st) be in a country with a strong legal protection for free speech. I remember belgium/holland/switzerland websites tried to be that way but what was the problem 2) to reach a global audience is very expensive as userbases grow you need more and more data storage and more and more data servers to simulate instantaneous connection anywhere in humanity, the usa has that money, china has that money, the qatari's of uea's have that money but have populaces to small to need it. So, what you say will happen is inevitable but for not it to happen will require a level of protection from lawsuit which doesn't exist in the usa or a level of wealth from countries that don't have it. 

 

@ProfD you may not know this but a very large, what I call, unconnected community exist in modernity. Said community has two parts.  The first part is the obvious, most in humanity are poor and are not online. That is a simple fact that most don't seem to comprehend. The second part are people in the wealthier places like usa/china/western  europe/russia/ who chose to not be online at all. Not even one website, none at all. It isn't as small a populace as media may suggest. So your larger community is quite large offline completely or online with one website. Age has nothing to do with it. YOu may be surprised. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

Man....are those your real teeth??

🤣  Thank you for the giggles this morning. I was feeling off. Your frankness sometimes sets me straight! lol

16 hours ago, Troy said:

I'm open to any suggestions.  The video is raw, I did not bother to shave or wear anything special -- if I did it would be too much work.  I figure I could invest 15 minutes a week to post a few sub-two-minute videos to the platform. 

Troy, you have excellent editorial and publishing insights. I'm still blown away by the science you dropped on the Wall Street Journal platform. You held us rapt - and that included the other panelists and host. There is NO ONE but you sharing insight on the future of Black people publishing - and we need it now more than ever, especially with the juggernaut that is am*zon.com. By the way, you've taught us through your knowledge how to work with am*zon instead of having am*zon work us. You already do the deep dive into the statistics -if you make it fun for Tik Tok your audience will grow - and by association, so will Black publishers and authors.

 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/6/2023 at 12:36 AM, richardmurray said:

The USA has foots in all the other countries online through usa based firms, but they don't want china or any other country to have a foothold in the usa. Simple. 

 

 

@richardmurray THANK YOU!--for explaining.

So, I learned that Tik Tok is from China!?

I am beginning to love Shorts! 

And, I read the word 'Shorts'; so it that what Tik Tok is, a space where people can post brief videos?

I just don't understand the difference between using the regular YouTube versus Shorts. I don't understand the different between Tik Tok and Twitter either.

There is so much going on these days with regard to the internet, and it is mindblowing for me. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Chevdove my pleasure if I helped.

 

owned by a company called https://www.bytedance.com/

but they are chinese and privately owned. 

 

yes, Tik Tok is the usa version of what bytedance first created in china, a short video platform. Yes, tiktok realized what twitter did, people in modernity actually love to post short messages, not long ones, in all formats. The engineering challenge is allowing for a seemingly seamless short video collection. it requires a lot of computers and storage houses to make this work globally. 

 

Well, functionally their is no functional difference between any online media platform, twitter/youtube/tiktok/facebook all have the same goal, to get more users to use their platform. The only difference is in identity, all the major social media platforms are based in the usa , except for tiktok.

 

In terms of attracting users, the question is the tactic they use. Twitter goes for short post, which focus on sensationalism and thus sharing. Youtube likes long videos where you can share films/documentaries, long media content. Facebook wants to be a place for it all. tiktok is short videos, sensationalism based. 

 

The internet isn't a lot, really. You may be surprised what isn't being done because little is financially profitable. The internet itself needed militaristic power, the natural resources for the underwater cable lines, the various personal devices, the data storage and server hubs all around earth to give the illusion of instant connection, came from countries that are known to be manipulated or exploited by outsiders since the 1800s . I think, I can be wrong, the source of the overwhelm is the advertising usage of the internet. It is the biggest commercial break you ever saw. 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/6/2023 at 12:36 AM, richardmurray said:

 

@Pioneer1 what can be found on tiktok is userbases. ... What you have to comprehend is userbases are currency. What does that mean? If I own a website and it has 60 million users, no bots, it may have 120 million users, including bots but that also means that the popularity of anything on my website will have farther weight than on another website with less uers. sequentially more advertisement money or profiles for organizations to get their messages out or make promotions. 

From forums to yahoo<emai>l to youtube<videos> to facebook<social media post> to twitter<short text> to tiktok<short videos> you have different websites that offered something that gave them a bigger userbase than the past leader. Tiktok has the advantage of being connected to china's internal userbase.

Why does that matter?

When the internet was first developed each country was given country codes. why? The idea was that countries will not be bound to each other and can develop their own internal internets while still connecting to each other. oddly enough, china is the only country to actually implement this in a complete way. yes, most major governments have their own internet, but most countries civilian populaces are not given their own proprietary network to utilize, it is an extension of the usa. 

And thus where tiktok is different. It is the first non usa based major userbase online. 

Yes, I didn't mention the short videos. The short videos was its catch, a very expensive thing which youtube was waiting to do but tiktok made them jump forward. 

 

Well, to your point about freedom of speech, these websites are expensive and they want to reach a wide audience and lawsuits can become messy. The reality is ,many lawsuits involve social media so most firms want to stay as safe as they can and that means restrictions. Tumblr is a great example, that isn't a major player and yet the involvement of the legal system caused shockwaves in that firm. 

 

For a website to allow for truly unfettered free speech they have to have a number of things. 1st) be in a country with a strong legal protection for free speech. I remember belgium/holland/switzerland websites tried to be that way but what was the problem 2) to reach a global audience is very expensive as userbases grow you need more and more data storage and more and more data servers to simulate instantaneous connection anywhere in humanity, the usa has that money, china has that money, the qatari's of uea's have that money but have populaces to small to need it. So, what you say will happen is inevitable but for not it to happen will require a level of protection from lawsuit which doesn't exist in the usa or a level of wealth from countries that don't have it. 

 



Very interesting breakdown on the freedoms or lack thereof on the internet!

I know there is no such thing as freedom of speech, no matter where you are your words have consequences.
But some nations are less restrictive than others.


 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/8/2023 at 3:46 PM, richardmurray said:

the source of the overwhelm is the advertising usage of the internet. It is the biggest commercial break you ever saw. 

 

This problem was exacerbated by the monopolies that dominate the internet.  Look at what Google has done to search...

 

Ads affect what is discoverable, what content is created, and how that content is written and it has made what we read on the web crappier and less useful.

 

Right now I'm finding ChatGPT to be more useful than Google for getting information it may not have real-time information, and it may spit out incorrect information, but it is not bombarded by advertisements or biased by content crafted to rank in Google's search results.

 

I've made a few posts on TikTok and the views on TikTok have been FAR greater than what I have seen on YouTube for the exact same videos. You can see two video posted on YouTube were viewed 33 times and the same two videos on TikTok were viewed 689 times. 

 

Google in an attempt to compete with TiKTok is now highlighting short videos.  You can also see from the image below an 8-second video I posted a couple of months ago has almost 27K views.  The first 24,000 views came within the first  24 hours! I wasn't even trying to get views I just wanted to show other people I knew the video,

 

In my opinion, TikTok is at the stage Facebook was when it first started.  You could go on Facebook and grow an audience organically (with effort but for free).  Once you created an audience and uploaded a boatload of content then Facebook flipped a switched and swapped organic reach for paid reach. Facebook's paid reach was never as good as its organic reach was.  That was why the main reason I no longer work Facebook's platforms.

 

TikTok will probably go down that road too. 

 

The real question is will TikTok help raise AALBC's profile and get more people to visit and engage on the website?  That is all I really care about.

 

tiktok.jpg

 

 

youtube views.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Troy

you and many others. Not merely online but my offline connections are talking about how useful they find chatgp. I admit I haven't used it and don't plan on to, but it clearly is the place of functionality that other services are not.

 

What Youtube shorts prove is how reactionary the business model in the usa firms are. They only move when endangered, and thus tiktok is like the  automotive manufacturers of Nippon. Everything toyota side company  did was done by the european economy class brands earlier,  but europe had badly thought brand names in the usa, or suspected the usa would demand on their manufacturers what they did to nippon. But tiktok is like toyoto , a company that merely did what had already shown value but with a concerted effort in the usa market which has led to industrial domination , now the usa government will act as it did in the past. 

 

I see your tiktok, you are posting the correct kind of attention getting videos and have a nice set of followers and followings. And since the younger ecitizens are using tiktok more than google search, I think it is adviseable to be on the platform advertising the website. An artist acquaintance of mine, suggested i get on tiktok but I am trying to improve my e profile where I already have more followers and more presence, so I have not generated as much content and only plan to do certain content, not a ton of things. 

 

Unfortunately for tiktok but fortunately for ecitizens, tiktok is at the epicenter of the battle between usa side china in the technology wars. Websites owned in the USA dominate the online presence in most countries on earth, china being one of the few that is not dominated by usa firms, but the usa does not want china to have a dominating firm in the usa, so they want to force a tiktok sale to a usa firm, the one thing schrumpf and biden agree on which says a lot.  This could end bad for tiktok in the usa. but I will say that we ecitizens are blessed because we will all get a glimpse of the internet in the future. If the USA forces bytestream to sell tiktok, then that act will validate in china or russia similar actions and will create a wave of government demands on online firms throughout humanity which means usa based online firms may lose a lot of marketshare overseas by governments cutting a usa plug into their countries. If the chinese government allows a chinese firm to be bullied like this it will be a huge win for the usa. If Bytestream make an exit from the usa, the chinese government will be sad a chinese firm was assaulted but happy cause it will be an undeniable statement of the usa's imperial position. The USA will be happy cause it will put a younger rival government in their place

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, the American legislators raked TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew over the coals for a few hours today. The questioning was often ridiculous and the statements from our politicians reveal what they don't know.

 

Right now the video views on TikTok are two orders of magnitude more video views on TikTok than I do on YouTube and I have 10 times the number of subscribers on YouTube than I have followers on Tiktok.

 

It remains to be seen if TikTok raises AALBC's profile and increases the number of engaged visitors coming to the site.  I have to figure out how to measure TikTok's impact on user engagement here.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Well I've been on TicTok, in earnest, for 2.5 months and in that time, I have posted 9 videos. That is less than one a week.  Going in I thought I do closer to one video a day.  The videos don't take long to create; I'm use my cell phone and do no editing. 

 

I don't upload all of the tictok videos I've created to youtube, but I have loaded a few for comparison purposes.

 

My Black Book Ecosystem Video was upload to Youtube and Tictok as the same time.

 

YouTube reports 36 views, 3 likes, and 0 comments

TickTok reports 633 views, 97 likes, and 3 comments

 

Tiktok engagement is an order of magnitude better.  When you consider that I have 351 followers on TikTok and 2,480+ subscribers on YouTube the difference in engagement is staggering. Tiktok's engagement is 200 times higher than YouTube's as a function of followers.

 

If Tiktok follows the trend of every other social platform, engagement will drop off as the platform begins to strive to deliver and sell more advertising.  Then again, the China-based company might be completely satisfied with just our data -- which is very valuable.  

 

tiktok-v-youtube.jpg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Troyand i want to add, being the primary search engine in the usa and for most of the online community is important. I comprehend data acquisition is valuable in various ways but in defense of tiktok, I think they want to be the big website and that means quality. remember, tiktok is the first non usa based website to have such a strong presence in the usa, I think that is underrated, the internet in the future will be global, and that is something no one has experienced before, the internet before tiktok was dominated by usa firms across the board, that age is ended , the future will have unexpected scenarios 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...