The speed of the change is astonishing. Since entering America in 2017, TikTok has picked up more users than all but a handful of social-media apps, which have been around more than twice as long (see chart 1). Among young audiences, it crushes the competition. Americans aged 18-24 spend an hour a day on TikTok, twice as long as they spend on Instagram and Snapchat and more than five times as long as they spend on Facebook, which these days is mainly a medium for communicating with the grandparents (see chart 2).<\/p>\n
TikTok\u2019s success has prompted its rivals to reinvent themselves. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has turned both apps\u2019 main feeds into algorithmically sorted \u201cdiscovery engines\u201d and launched Reels, a TikTok clone bolted onto Facebook and Instagram. Similar lookalike products have been created by YouTube (Shorts), Snapchat (Spotlight), Pinterest (Watch) and even Netflix (Fast Laughs). The latest TikTok-inspired makeover, announced on March 8th, was by Spotify, a music app whose homepage now features video clips that can be skipped by swiping up. (TikTok\u2019s Chinese sister app, Douyin, is having a similar effect in its home market, where digital giants like Tencent are increasingly putting short videos at the centre of their offerings.)<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Short-form video has taken over social media. Although users have a seemingly endless appetite for the format, it is proving less profitable for platforms than the old news feed https:\/\/t.co\/3uUiiiW4VL<\/a><\/p>\n — The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 21, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n