Almost Famous

The new way to “make it” on TikTok

Author

Hannah Doyle
November 18, 2022

Good morning. The biggest trending topic on Twitter right now is…the end of Twitter. Following an employee mass exodus, reports are suggesting Twitter might not make it through the weekend.

We’ll dive into the mayhem on Tuesday, but in the meantime—consider forwarding DMs, saving bookmarks, and screencapping that pithy tweet you’ve always been proud of.

–Hannah Doyle

The Rules of TikTok Virality Are Changing

Victoria Paris / Interview Magazine

Victoria Paris is more than the internet’s “only living girl.” She’s a lifestyle creator who’s always had a prescient take on social media’s complex paradigms—and this week, she shared her thoughts on the ways those paradigms are shifting at TikTok.

“The way [TikTok is] changing is the social currency of the app,” Paris said. What that means:

  • With TikTok’s knack for presenting audiences with highly curated content it knows they’ll love, “going viral” has become more commonplace (which also makes it less valuable).

  • As such, more TikTok creators are endeavoring to launch a career on the app—which means considering things like follow-to-follower ratio once exclusive to Instagram culture.

“TikTok was like a finsta in the way that you’d follow anyone and not care about the ratio,” Paris said. “But now TikTok virality is so easily accessible that people take it more seriously.”

The impacts of that change: The notion of “all it takes is one” no longer applies. A singular video with a couple million views isn’t likely to build a community the way it used to. Rather, multiple videos with millions of views each appears to be the minimum needed to make a dent (or get a Famous Birthdays writeup).

That’s partly due to TikTok’s own meteoric rise over the last three years:

  • The app grew 60% in 2020, then another 40% the year after.

  • Today, nearly 750 million monthly users are on the app.

Our Take

As views and followers become more diffuse, creators might not be able to reach the numbers that they once could overnight—but that’s not a bad thing. It’s an opportunity to double down on each platform’s superpower.

On TikTok, that’s a mind-reading algorithm that can cultivate viewers who really care about niche content. Reaching the masses is no longer necessary for a thriving creator career—and few algorithms can craft an audience as hyper-specific as TikTok.

Karl Jacobs Releases His First Animated Short

Karl Jacobs / Twitter

What brings you to Twitter these days? For some, it’s the front-row seat to corporate havoc being wrecked. But for creators, it’s the opportunity to become a big fish in a small but turbulent pond.

Case in point: Minecraft gamer and former MrBeast cast member Karl Jacobs, who released his first animated short, Beside Myself, on Twitter earlier this week.

The two-minute video is the latest in Jacobs’ growing portfolio of narrative storytelling, which includes a comic book series, Time Traveler Tales, released this summer.

So why Twitter? Jacobs has a robust Twitter following of 4.3 million. That exceeds his following on YouTube (where Jacobs is solely putting out Minecraft content) by a few thousand, but choosing the bird app to unveil new content is still an interesting play.

Our Take

On Twitter, videos and multimedia stand out more against text than they might on YouTube—where videos compete with other videos. Jacobs could be strategizing with that (and Twitter’s multimedia-friendly algorithm) in mind.

And FWIW? If creators still choose Twitter amidst the chaos, maybe there’s hope for the app after all.

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IShowSpeed Takes Streaming Lead on YouTube

IShowSpeed / Essentially Sports

This week, the streamer surpassed Typical Gamer in subscribers, making him the top English-speaking streamer on YouTube at 13.2 million subs.

Zoom out: IShowSpeed stands out among the predominantly white male gamer demo by bringing high energy and athleticism to his soccer-focused streams.

IShowSpeed gained 1 million subscribers over a few days last year, making him one of the fastest-growing YouTubers on the platform.

Our Take

IShowSpeed’s appeal is multifaceted—he’s funny, he makes music videos, he brings stars like Lil Nas X to his channel, etc.

It’s no surprise, then, that the numbers show a speed-y rise (pun intended) to the top—being different is as sound a strategy as they come.

🔥 Press Worthy