Headline, July 23 2022/ ''' '' TIKTOK TERRIFIES TIPTOE '' '''

''' '' TIKTOK TERRIFIES

 TIPTOE '' '''

TIKTOK MAKES CREATING FILMS EASY. It has done for video-editing what Instagram did for photo-editing a decade ago, allowing amateurs to turn wobbly recordings into slick-looking films.

Better yet, the AI discovery algorithm dangles the prospect of viral success before unknown creators, who struggle on apps like Facebook, which rewards those with lots of followers.

QUAVERING : THE WORLD STUDENTS SOCIETY IS FEVERING. TikTok's rivals are nervous. Governments are suspicious. A billion users and rising are glued to their screens. Time for Briefing TikTok.

THE CAT strains to see what is on the counter, first hopping on its hind legs, then bounding up for a closer look - only to recoil as if electrocuted at the sight of a piece of tinfoil. This six-second drama which has been viewed more than 40m times, was highlighted by TikTok as one of its ''hottest'' recent videos.

Cat videos are the butt of jokes on late night TV. But they and the hundreds of millions of other short clips uploaded to TikTok are causing sleepless nights in both Silicon Valley and Western capitals. The app is growing at a pace that has startled competitors and regulators.

In just five years it has broken into the top tier of global social media, a club that American officials used to consider so closed to competition that they started an antitrust case against its leading member, Facebook.

As TikTok hoovers up users, and the advertising dollars that follow them, its larger rivals are rewriting their own apps to mimic the young upstart. The shake-up may not end there : TikTok's move into e-commerce could disrupt another industry.

GOVERNMENTS eye TikTok nervously for different reasons . As the first consumer facing app from China to take off in the West, TikTok is a source of pride in Beijing.

But the app's Chinese ownership makes politicians elsewhere uneasy about its tightening grip on their citizens' attention. Users data could end up in the wrong hands, they fear, or their viewing could be moulded by Chinese propagandists.

TikTok has already been banned in India, formerly its largest market. Other countries, including America, are considering their next move.

IT WAS only 10 years ago that Zhang Yiming, a bookish Chinese entrepreneur a year older than Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, founded a software firm called ByteDance. Among its first creations were Neihan Duanzi [ inside jokes ], a platform for sharing gags, and Touttiao [ Headlines ], a news aggregator.

The apps used artificial intelligence [AI] to learn what kind of sketches or stories users liked. Both took off; today Toutiao is China's biggest news aggregator, with 360 million users.

Mr. Zhang soon wondered what else his algorithm might do. In 2016 ByteDance released Douyin [ Shaking Sound ], an app for recording and sharing lip-sync videos. Douyin was modelled on Musical. Iy, another Chinese made lip-sync app that was popular with young Americans, but enhanced by ByteDance's AI discovery engine.

It was a hit. The following year ByteDance released a twin app outside China, with an identical interface and algorithm but separate content. It used Douyin's logo of a juddering musical quaver byt had a snappier name : TikTok.

At first TikTok was little noticed outside Asia. But in 2017 ByteDance bought musical.Iy and soon transferred its 100 million users to TikTok. TikTok has since grown like no other app. 

In September, when it was a little over four years old, it reached 1 billion users, a milestone that Facebook, YouTube and Instagram took eight years to pass, albeit at a time when fewer people were online. It has been the world's most downloaded mobile app since early 2020.

And whereas young audiences are lukewarm about Facebook, TikTok has them hooked. Some 44% of American users are under 25, believes eMarketer, a data company, compared with 16% of Facebook's.

Whereas the biggest accounts on Facebook are of athletes, singers or other celebrities, the top TikTokers are famous for being TikTokers. Khaby Lame, a Senegalese silent comic, leads the pack with 146 million followers.

Star creators have been pampered - and paid - by the company to stay on the platform.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on TikTok, Social Media and the World, continues. The World Students Society thanks the author, The Economist.

With respectful dedication to TikTok, the World, the Users, and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless