GM 🌞 Just some thoughts on #Nostr and #TikTok…

In the beginning, the biggest social media innovation TikTok brought to the table was the ability to easily and intuitively search and add audio created by others to your own video. This is part of the reason it was so short-form to begin with - to avoid copyright infringements.

But the real rise in TikTok came from its amazing social search engine, not the viral audio memes. People want to find solutions for problems in a succinct way, and the search features and short-form video content on TikTok allow for this. (Aside: the search filters for time - like past 24hrs - on TikTok have been “broken” since the first hearing in Congress last year…)

This is where Mark Zuckerberg has really misunderstood the assignment. He added Reels and Audio features to IG a long time ago, but his understanding of why people use TikTok was superficial. That’s why Gen Z calls Instagram the “wannabe TikTok”. He has been rolling out search improvements in the last six months, but they still pale in comparison to TikTok.

I’m going to post a side by side of my search results on IG and TikTok for the same search terms just to show you what I mean. See how the IG results (left) are just generic gardening posts with a few spring flowers in the mix, but the TikTok results (right) are specific to spring gardening? That’s what I’m talking about. A year ago that search string would have gotten me “no results found” on IG, so they have made some progress, but again, still not nearly as helpful.

Anyway - just food for thought for client devs and #socialmedia nerds. 🤓