TikTok
- Their algorithm seems to very quickly hone in on things I actually want to see.
- e.g. if figured out that I like to see comedy clips, some woodworking videos etc
- I suspect that they do this by a combination of showing you some "test" videos that quickly bucket your interests and then using additional data based on other videos that have paired well together from other users
- Keep doing the above and I would imagine you get to a pretty good graph of what I'm into
- Have been a user for YEARS
- they have almost all of my personal relationships mapped
- choose to show me videos with "Wait till you see what happens!" titles that are ~10 minutes of build up to an incredibly anticlimactic ending
- As a user and a SRE/Developer, I ask myself: "The smartest people in tech + essentially limitless computing power and this is the best you can do?"
I would guess one of two things is going on:
1. I remember seeing those video ads about 10-15 years ago that went on for about 20 minutes and there was no fast forward or skip etc. Someone pointed out: "Advertisers care a LOT about people who are willing to just sit there and watch a 20 minute video"
2. What I'll basically call the "Groupon Effect" (based on [0]) which is basically "Well X is good, X+1 is better so X*1000 must be great". Andrew Mason talks a lot about this in the linked article and how Groupon just blindly followed the "metrics" rather than thinking through "Ok, what is really the best for our users/community". It seems the tech giants have gone for "What makes the most money RIGHT NOW!" vs "How do we build a larger LTV over the next couple years"
[0] - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/andrew-mason-on-grou...