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Re:TikTok and the Sorting Hat by WillPostForFood on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @11:14PM (#24056931)
Musical.ly hit a wall. Only after it was purchased by Bytedance, rebranded as TikTok, and Bytedance poured their magical, cultural-agnostic AI sauce (and ad dollars) did TikTok truly take off. By all indications, this AI magic was wholly created in China and retrofitted onto TikTok.

Music.ly blew up in 2015 and was in the top app charts for a year before Bytedance bought them. They were at 133 million registered users and 40 million MAU in 2016. What was the wall they hit?

https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/si...

Re:TikTok and the Sorting Hat by wtracy on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @12:23AM (#24057240)
They "hit a wall" in the sense that they couldn't keep up the hockey stick style growth that venture capitalists have come to expect.
Re:TikTok and the Sorting Hat by WillPostForFood on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @07:19PM (#24066668)
Maybe that's true, but in that case it was just Bytedance as a financial savior, not technical or product savior. Could have been Facebook, Google, or anyone with deep pockets.