TikTok is an international version of a Chinese app called Doyen, both owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance.

Both of these apps, which are mostly the same except for some differences in user interface

and algorithms, and the sort of content that is favored by those algorithms, present a simple

enough concept. A social network oriented around short-form video content that folks are served up based on what the app's respective algorithms decide will be most interesting to them.

So this is not an entirely novel concept.

YouTube has had a similar sort of thing going for decades, and other social networks like Instagram and Twitter have been providing users with an algorithmically

generated stream of stuff for a long time as well.

In those cases, primarily photos and text content until recently, but still generally the same

idea.

TikTok's seeming secret sauce, though, is that it has a user interface that drops people

right into the action.

So rather than having to build up a profile and online presence,

you can download TikTok and just start watching videos.

And from that moment, based on how you click and tap and what you watch and for how long,

you will be served content that should align with your interests,

at least in the sense that you gravitate

toward certain types of short-form video content in ways that are legible to this software.

And those offerings will then become more and more accurate to what you are likely to engage

with with every new watch.

And that jump-in ability, plus an algorithm that just seems incredibly good at what it does, has made TikTok in particular a sensation,

both in the sense that it's become wildly popular in a very short period of time, compared to its competitors,

achieving 150 million monthly active users and about 400 million downloads of the app in the U.S. in just a few years, which is astounding,

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