How Short-form Content on TikTok Reaffirms the Strength of Weak Ties through the For You Page Algorithm
Although weak ties are not as “powerful” as strong ties, contrary to what one may believe, weak ties have swift and high-efficiency transmission effectiveness. Short-form content is palatable to a broad audience (as people who have similar niche interests would be initially attracted to the video, and the video itself does not “waste” one’s time.) Especially with new short-form content applications such as TikTok, these algorithms affirm the paradoxical strength of weak ties.
TikTok and other social media platforms that rely on short-form content also rely on the propagation of weak ties to develop strong triadic closure. A node fulfills the Strong Triadic Closure Property by not explicitly violating the property– for instance, if we have nodes A, B, and C, we say that node A violates the Strong Triadic Closure property if it has strong ties to two other nodes, B and C. There is no edge (either a strong or weak tie) between B and C. We can say that node A satisfies the Strong Triadic Closure property since it does not violate it; similarly, many TikTok users form a network that fulfills the Strong Triadic Closure Property since they have some edge (weak or strong) with at least two other users. TikTok’s “For You Page” algorithm shows content to a user based on the user’s past history by analyzing the user’s interaction with a video (watch time, liking, and sharing) and then pushes out videos with similar characteristics to the user’s history. Perhaps one of the reasons for TikTok’s success is its algorithm’s efficiency in propagating Strong Triadic Closure Property among its users in a unique fashion. Weak ties are typically defined as “acquaintances,” and through TikTok’s “For You Page” algorithm, it essentially shows similar content based on user’s past data and, unbeknownst to its users, is automatically categorizing its users’ into weakly tied subnetworks, thus forming these “acquaintanceships.” By having an algorithm that effectively chooses the content the user views rather than vice versa, it guarantees weak ties by precluding the possibility of the user from choosing content that may not align with its peers with niche interests.
One can argue that this short-form content also benefits from strong ties. Social media influencers with cult followings are (typically) “protagonists,” thus, the user is forming a unique “strong tie” where the audience has an intimate connection with the influencer. Because of the user’s perceived closeness with the influencer, it forms a sense of ethos.
https://doi.org/10.2991/mmetss-19.2019.82
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch03.pdf