Hey Friends 👋,
The big novel idea that Tiktok brought to social media was its algorithmic feed full of strangers
A few months ago, Twitter, the last social media holdout, implemented its own version of the For You page and made it the default way users interact with Twitter.
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While everyone is trying to copy For You page, Tiktok has been busy moving in the direction of adding more specific feeds.
Here are two experiments they recently ran:
💡 Experiment 1: Tiktok Topic Specific Feed
The Control arm won. Topic-specific feeds were never launched.
💡 Experiment 2: Tiktok Friends Only Feed
In the next iteration, Tiktok was more aggressive and tested a Friends-specific feed. Friends feed shows only Tiktoks from people that mutually follow each other.
It’s funny to see Tikotok investing in a non-algorithmic user-curated feed while Twitter and other social media companies are doing the exact opposite.
(This test is still running, so TBD on the results.)
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I found these experiments to be a good reminder that value accrues at polar ends of a spectrum (& anything in between is kind of moot).
Until next week,
Ali Abouelatta