How TikTok broke social media

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2023-10-12 09:10

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《经济学人·商论》2023-04-02

How TikTok broke social media

社交媒体

Social media

TikTok如何打击社交媒体

How TikTok broke social media

无论是否被禁，该应用都已迫使其竞争对手采取不那么赚钱的模式

Whether or not it is banned, the app has forced its rivals to adopt a less lucrative model

IS TIKTOK’S TIME up? As the social-media app’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, was getting ready for a grilling before Congress on March 23rd, after The Economist went to press, TikTok’s 100m-plus users in America were fretting that their government was preparing to ban the Chinese-owned platform because of security fears. Their anguish contrasts with utter glee in Silicon Valley, where home-grown social-media firms would love to be rid of their popular rival. With every grumble from Capitol Hill, the share prices of Meta, Pinterest, Snap and others edge higher.
TikTok大限将至了吗？3月23日，在本期《经济学人》付印后，该社交媒体应用的首席执行官周受资接受了美国国会质询。TikTok的一亿多美国用户担心其政府出于安全考虑，准备禁用这个中资社交媒体平台。这些用户的担忧与硅谷的狂喜形成了鲜明对比，那里的美国本土社交媒体公司都乐得摆脱这个大受欢迎的竞争对手。国会山对TikTok每抱怨一次，Meta、Pinterest、Snap等公司的股价就会有一波上涨。

TikTok’s fate hangs in the balance. But what is already clear is that the app has changed social media for good—and in a way that will make life harder for incumbent social apps. In less than six years TikTok has weaned the world off old-fashioned social-networking and got it hooked on algorithmically selected short videos. Users love it. The trouble for the platforms is that the new model makes less money than the old one, and may always do so.
TikTok命运未卜，但有一点已经很清楚，那就是这个应用已经永久性地改变了社交媒体，而且这种改变会让老牌社交应用的日子不那么好过。在不到六年的时间里，TikTok让世界摆脱了老式的社交网络，转而沉迷于算法推荐的短视频。用户欲罢不能。这给各大平台带来的麻烦是，这种新模式不像旧模式那么能赚钱，而且可能会一直如此。

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).
这一变化速度惊人。TikTok在2017年进入美国，现在它的用户数量只少于寥寥几个社交媒体应用，而这些应用的成立时长是TikTok的两倍多（见图表1）。在年轻受众中，TikTok碾压了竞争对手。18至24岁的美国人每天用TikTok的时间为一个小时，是花在Instagram和Snapchat上的两倍、Facebook的五倍多。如今年轻人用Facebook主要是为了和祖父母交流（见图表2）。... ...【想要继续阅读付费文章？】欢迎打开商论App，订阅后可获取全文中英双语版

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