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The Bloodiest Battle in the Shortform Video App War Will Be Fought Through Off-Platform Embeds
It’s not about how many users you have. It’s about how long a half-life your videos have off the platform
So Byte happened this weekend. Dom Hofmann’s shortform video sharing app, the successor to the long-lamented Vine, launched with a flurry of excitement on social media as people wondered if it would recapture the success of the original app.
Of course, it’s been three years since Hofmann’s previous app had its last hurrah, and in the intervening time we’ve seen the conversation around online video dominated by TikTok. (There’s a certain amount of hubris in Hofmann refusing to rename his long-trailed app, despite the fact that its likely largest competitor is owned by a company called Bytedance.) TikTok isn’t going anywhere, and in part that’s down to its miraculous numbers.
More than two million people a day downloaded TikTok and tried it out last year, according to data from analysts SensorTower. In all, 1.65 billion people have.
The numbers are staggering when you consider that half the world’s seven billion-strong population doesn’t have an internet connection, but they’re also underplaying TikTok’s influence. Because in 2020, the…
