Technology

This thread is really showing which people actually read articles

At the same time, social networking is built into the most popular Chinese online shopping platforms, like Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com. They feature livestreamed videos of shopping influencers, and robust chat and photo-sharing functions, blurring the lines between social media and e-commerce.

The model has delivered: In 2023, TikTok’s Chinese sister app, Douyin, said its platform sales exceeded 2 trillion yuan ($2 billion). Xiaohongshu doesn’t disclose detailed figures, but the app’s aggressive expansion into social commerce in 2023 coincided with the first year it turned a net profit to the tune of $500 million.

So China has several profitable social media companies and a model that works regardless of the platform. It feels like Insta has tried this and doesn't quite understand the mechanics but imitates showing influencer driven decisions. The difference is that western influencers sell their exposure while TikTok (et al) use influencers as their product and charge to alter the algorithm to expose the product to a targeted audience. It's insidious because people will be shown something that they didn't know they wanted and led to believe that they made the decision to get this thing. It's Inception, but with our hobbies and interests.

The ramifications for niche porn are tremendous. Both weird categories of pornography and the idea that small groups will be fed a constant stream of their own unique interests. Imagine if you didn't know this was happening and had an expensive hobby. Social media wants you to buy things and will give you the connection to spend instead of pursuing the hobby.

The hobby may soon not be about what we do but what we bought to show we are hobbyists. Consumption as participation. I guess we already do this with streaming entertainment, so why not?

Despite the downvotes (post was at -2 at the time of this comment), this is actually an interesting article that talks about the differences in approach between platforms.

“Overwhelmingly, Chinese social apps are competing with traditional e-commerce platforms,” he said. “The fact that U.S. lawmakers aren’t talking about this signals that Western apps are going to be playing catch-up for a very long time, no matter what happens to TikTok.”

What is the secret sauce?

It kinda looks like the US might move to the other end of the cultural colonialism thing.

It might be worth it to pick some mandarin up.

What, it's not e commerce , its massive amounts of data, and a massive amount of content. Most people i know who use tik tok never use the store, they use tik tok because it gives them a seemingly limitless amount of content that interests them. They're able to do this not because they have some secret sauce but because of the sheer volume of people using and posting to the app. The more people watch the more data they have for there algorithm to identify trends, interest groups, interest groups correlations etc. to allow them to identify and target content to an audience. The more people that post the more you can inundate that audience and keep the infinite scroll going.

If tik tok did get shut down and everyone switched to reels or YouTube they would benefit from the increased scale and it would be pretty much the same app within a couple months.

They're not as repressive as American ones.