The TikTok Strategy: Leveraging AI for Global Dominance

Hey guys! Welcome to another blog by Saurabh MJR. This blog is going to be very interesting especially for those, who use TikTok and also for those who are still wondering, why is TikTok so popular among netizens? But the reality is TikTok is not totally understood by many people around the world. I mean there has to be something which makes it different and addictive at the same time. 

TikTok – known as DouYin in China, is a huge social media platform with over 1.5 billion registered users worldwide. In TikTok people can represent themselves from comedy to memes to science experiments to stunts in 15 seconds. Reports from Datareportal 2019, says that tiktok has 500 million active users worldwide every month. TikTok was also the third most downloaded app in the first quarter (Q1) of 2019, with 188 million new users, becoming the most downloaded app on Apple App Store. As you will soon see the company behind TikTok app is turning AI for success which makes them different from the current generation of social media apps. Well, many of you might be thinking who cares but the rise of this platform may soon take many by surprise. So,

Who’s Behind TikTok? / How TikTok came into existence

ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, made headline news when its valuation jumped to $75 billion, to become the world’s most valuable start-up.  Zhang Yiming- the founder of ByteDance was a former Microsoft software engineer. The company ByteDance is a technology company that specializes in the use of artificial intelligence to link people with large amounts of information. ByteDance leveraged capabilities in consumer-focused artificial intelligence (AI) to become one of the first Chinese Big Tech digital platforms to succeed outside China, notably in the US and India.

In 2016, ByteDance released a short form Chinese video app called Doyen. Later in 2017, they expand the concept of Doyen with a new name TikTok and launched it worldwide. But at that time TikTok had their biggest competitor ‘Musical.ly’ which was founded in 2014. ByteDance bought ‘Musical.ly’ for 1 billion dollars in 2017 merging the two platforms and their associate user base. TikTok now has exclusive control over the short video platform in just two years. As ByteDance is an Internet technology company Artificial Intelligence is at core of what these guys do.

How AI is being used by Social Media Platforms

We share vast information on various Social media platforms including photographs, thought, interest, buying patterns etc. The total number of users in the world accessing social media is approximately 2.89 billion. But extracting the relevant information from this huge amount of data is an extremely challenging task for any business. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) comes handy. It can provide an effective solution for analysing this huge amount of data effectively and efficiently. Designed with specific algorithms, an AI can scan through user’s data, posts and comments to help or provide a more personalized content to the user for a better experience. The Chatbots or virtual assistant that users encounter online are actually features of AI. They can provide faster responses while remaining active for 24 hours. This process is quick and enhances overall user experience. 

Social media platforms such as Facebook is presently using AI to flag those posts which represents suicidal thoughts. Based on analysis of such posts by human moderators, it is sending suicide prevention materials to particular users and is also implementing the same technology in Instagram. Pinterest has acquired Kosei which is assisting in developing an AI based interface that can provide personalised recommendations based on user-specific searches and interests. Twitter is using AI to provide more effective face detection features and also to predict which parts of an image will have the most influence on a user.

Artificial Intelligence: The Major Key to TikTok’s Growth

Yes you read it right. TikTok uses the most powerful AI that’s more extreme than other social media platform. TikTok targets their users by using Artificial Intelligence to bring the most accurate content they are interested in watching. Let me explain you it in more detail. TikTok relies on AI technology in two ways. First, on the user’s side, its algorithms quickly learn their preferences, as they capture not only the users’ “likes” and comments, but how long they actually watch each video. As the clips are very short, AI algorithms immediately get to work analysing their behaviour and delivering content, by simply making recommendations. In very little time, they learn enough to make stunningly accurate predictions about which videos will catch a user’s interest. In a way, TikTok soon knows users better than they know themselves as behavioural preferences may differ from stated desires.  

Secondly, on the producer side, AI also helps content creators craft viral videos. It simplifies video editing and suggests music, hashtags, filters and other enhancements that are trending or have been proven popular based on the category. These are the major factor for its growth in short amount of time. But AI-enabled content consumption and production generate their own problems. Let's talk about some of the problems faced.

Growing pains: AI-based Platforms Can be Victim of their own Success

But growing at breakneck speed isn’t without difficulties. AI-enabled content consumption and production generate their own problems as inappropriate content is sometimes created and delivered to users. When an ecosystem of user-generated content takes off, monitoring problems scale with it. This is true when an app is, in fact, designed to quickly surface the most popular content. Of course, AI can be used to filter most inappropriate content, but technology will never beperfect. Even if a tiny percentage of questionable content percolates through, it can still mean thousands of videos and inappropriate data. 

Conclusion: I just want to explain you guys, how TikTok used the most powerful tool AI to develop a strong user network around the world.

 Were you aware of the facts that I mentioned in the blog. If you have any interesting questions related to this topic then send them in the comment section. Also share this information to your friends and family members. I hope you like the blog.

----- Sourabh M.JR

* DM for credits or removal request for images( no copyright intended ) 🔗 All rights and credits reserved to the respective owner.