They Really Said For YOU Page
When you think of TikTok, what do you picture? Embarrassing young children trying to become the next big TikToker? An endless stream of hashtags? Musicians trying to jumpstart a career with a trending song? Thirty second long dance challenges? Although TikTok may be notorious for being this sort of cringey social media platform for teenagers, its For You page algorithm is really quite phenomenal.
In its most basic form, the For You page algorithm is pretty obvious: just show people more of what they like; but what exactly does this entail? Every time you open the app, TikTok is (as creepy as it sounds) keeping track of every single interaction you make on the app. You just liked a TikTok and added it to your favorites? That’s noted. Oh, you actually managed to watch the entirety of a three minute long video? That must’ve really peaked you interest! You just marked a video as “not interested”? Well… that’s pretty self-explanatory. Each one of these interactions works in the algorithm to continuously perfect the page to be “for you.”
Think about it, every time a user interacts with a video, a tie is formed between the user and that video’s content. If a user responds positively to that video (i.e. by liking it, commenting, sharing, following the creator, adding it to their favorites etc.), TikTok comes to the conclusion that the user wants to see more similar content. Thus, content that is similar to the original video begin to pop up on a user’s For You page. Every video is connected to whole collection of videos because of shared hashtags and sounds. If you continue to only be interested in one type, such as digital art, you’ll probably just stay on “arttok” (essentially a super node of art videos) as many artists end up using the same sounds and hashtags; you end up remaining in the art video network per say. If a user responds negatively to a video, the algorithm will essentially form a negative tie between the user and that video’s content, most likely making sure to not show the user any more videos that are connected positively to that video.
When a user looks up a certain creator, hashtag, or just a topic in general, TikTok assumes that the user is possibly interested, essentially creating a weak tie between the user and what they searched up; then that content begins to show up on one’s For You page. If the user begins to respond positively to the new content, the algorithm solidifies the tie between the two as positive and continues to show similar videos.
TikTok as a whole can be seen as a huge network of videos, and the For You page is really the gateway to accessing all different points in this network. Every interaction with the For You page helps to dictate whether one stays in their respective bubble, or continue to branch out into the greater TikTok community.
Source:
How the TikTok Algorithm Works in 2021 (and How to Work With It)