How TikTok’s algorithm made it a success: ‘It pushes the boundaries’

The company’s secret sauce is what populates its For You Page, which predicts the videos that will pique a viewer’s interest

Unlike older recommendation algorithms, TikTok doesn’t wait for the user to indicate that they like a video with a thumbs up. Instead, it appears to actively test its own predictions, experimenting by showing videos that it thinks might be enjoyable and gauging the response

It is, quite literally, the trillion-dollar question: how did TikTok go from a niche social network for lip-syncing teens to the most popular app in the western world, threatening to knock Facebook off its perch entirely, in just a few short years?

There are no end of possible answers, and TikTok owes its phenomenal success to a host of canny choices: easy-to-use video creation tools blurred the line between creator and consumer far more than YouTube had ever managed; a vast library of licensed music allowed teens to soundtrack their clips without fear of copyright strikes; a billion-dollar advertising campaign across Facebook and Instagram bought new users as quickly as Zuckerberg’s company would send them over.