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A Deeper Look Upon Network Effects as it Relates to Social Media

Network Effects — the phenomenon that we know to explain why “a product or service gains additional value as more people use it” — is an influencing factor in many facets of our lives. This phenomenon is all encompassing; it impacts everything from our technological devices, online user-ship, social lives, etc. This theory, however, can be further broken down. 

Many are aware that the wild success of many, if not all, social media platforms today can be attributed to Network Effects. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more thrive off of each unit increase in user-ship, as, the more able the platform is able to reach broad ends of a social network, the more powerful that network, and platform, becomes. This phenomena is not the only application of Network Effects on social media platforms, however. 

Recently, a video sharing and creating platform called Tik Tok hit the market and saw enormous growth and success. Thought of as a Gen-Z icon and staple application, Tik Tok was able to emerge on top as one of the most downloaded and used social media platforms on the market today. While the application was certainly a hit, many referred to it as a “knock-off Vine”. Vine — an application that gained hyper popularity, and then was taken off of the app store — is the predecessor of Tik Tok, and was the so-called “original” video sharing platform. 

So, the question becomes, how exactly did a “copy-cat” application such as Tik Tok soar in numbers so high that its predecessor could not even fathom it? The answer lies in Network Effects. Particularly speaking, the ways in which Tik Tok creators were able to not only leverage this phenomenon, but also deepen it. In an article published by TechCrunch, author Josh Constine elaborates on this so-called “content network effect”. 

According to Constine, “each piece of content adds value to the rest…Tik Tok is all about remixes where users shoot a new video to recontextualize audio pulled from someone else’s clip, or riff on an existing meme or concept. That only works because Tik Tok has had time to build up an immense armory of content to draw inspiration from”. Thus, Tik Tok gains value in every shared piece of content. At this point, one may ask; what makes Tik Tok so special, and why can’t every social media platform have this same effect for each time their users post new content? The answer to this lies in Tik Tok’s incrementation in content creation. “All the content on Tik Tok serves as remix fodder for the rest. Every song, dance, joke, prank, and monologue generates resources for other creators to exploit. It’s a bottomless well of inspiration”. 

Also, the physical characteristics of the app are not to be discounted in terms of their influence upon this effect. In particular, the “Tap the audio” button at the bottom of each video on the app allows you to “click through and you’ll see all the other videos that use it. Tik Tok even offers a whole search engine for sorting through sounds by categories like Trending, Greatest Hits, Love, Gaming, and travel. Sometimes remixes are based on an idea rather than an audio. #FlipTheSwitch sees couples instantly swapping clothes when the light flicks off, and has collected over 3.6 billion videos across over 500,000 remixed versions of the video”.  While other platforms have attempted to achieve this sort of incrementation, no other application has been able to achieve it at this magnitude. 

While Network Effects have proven wildly successful for the furthering of many and most social media platforms, it is arguable that it has been most useful for Tik Tok, as demonstrated by the immense amount of buzz around the application.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/01/content-network-effect/

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