The Overlooked Secret of TikTok’s Popularity
Hint: it’s not the quality of their content 😉
At first sight, there is nothing special about TikTok. People create short silly videos and upload them for an entire world to see. Duh. Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms allowed sharing images and videos long before that. So what’s the secret of TikTok’s insane popularity?
Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has become one of the fastest-growing social networks in the world. The idea of the app is not novel, the UI is pretty predictable...yet, the app has been downloaded billions of times. A lot of users don’t even realize what attracts them. What makes people glued to their small phone screens is a tiny thing that probably only developers can truly appreciate. The algorithm.
This is a pretty complex topic, but in computer science, an algorithm is a set of steps for a computer program to accomplish a particular task. Developers learn basic algorithms such as binary search or merge sort in the first few months of studying computer science. But in reality, all of us have to deal with algorithms on a daily basis.
