Ask HN: Techwise, how did TikTok get so good?
To write something obvious: companies generally don’t succeed or fail based on their technology. A good user experience is necessary for TikTok to do well but it doesn’t matter whether they achieve because of ‘good’ tech, whatever that is, or in spite of it.<p>I think there were a few things for the business where tech was important:<p>- being good at serving&#x2F;storing videos<p>- the recommendation engine. There are two parts, one is taking user preferences as a strong signal (not a tech decision) and another is recommendation algorithms which produce this effect (I think they’re rote a paper that suggested things about how this worked)<p>- being an app people wanted to use (weakly tech but mostly not)<p>I think a some of the explosive growth came from the app having been iterated on a bunch in China first so it seemed more polished when it reached the west. But I could be pretty wrong there.<p>To answer the question about engineering talent:<p>- Chinese people will go to the US, get great educations at US universities, some get denied work visas or otherwise choose to return to China. TikTok can employ them in a less competitive labour market and not fight companies like Google which don’t operate in China.