TikTok has blown up in ways no one has been able to imagine, even Kevin Mayer, who had a brief stint as the social media platform’s CEO in 2020. Mayer said that TikTok will continue to grow and thrive in the future, and that it could surpass YouTube as a social media brand that is still relevant and relevant 10 years later.
“In many ways, TikTok is a marketing tool for creators. That’s where they get big, and then they move people over to Instagram or YouTube, and that is probably something TikTok is going to want to revisit,”Sharon Waxman, editor-in-chief of Mayer, received a message from Mayer. “I think it will definitely be here in 10 years.”
Mayer in a conversation on “The State of the Industry”TheGrill stated that TikTok, however pervasive and large, is still a problem. “pales in comparison”YouTube and the impact it has had on the creator economy. Both platforms are truly amazing. “social entertainment,” he explains, in which TikTok, like YouTube, doesn’t require any communication between friends in order to interact, and the platform’s algorithm relies on individual usage patterns rather than other user DNA.
Mayer worked at TikTok to plan how to keep creators there, and offered up to $300 million for creators to use the site. YouTube plans to give around $18 billion to creators this year, which is a stark contrast to TikTok’s potential growth.
“YouTube and TikTok are quite similar from that perspective, and it has changed the time spent with social media and has increased dramatically,”Mayer stated. “YouTube doesn’t get its fair share of accolades. It is a massive service. As great as TikTok is, it is much smaller than YouTube.”
Mayer, however, is optimistic about serious storytelling despite TikTok’s rise and the fact that it has taken away attention from TV and movies. He argues that people visit TikTok not because of storytelling. Candle Media, Mayer’s media company, specializes in specific types of content.
“It’s not linear storytelling the way television is,”Mayer stated. “It’s different. It does steal time away from Hollywood, away from our storytelling, but it is not storytelling in the way Hollywood thinks about it. So there’s still a huge lane for Hollywood to maintain relevance…that is not what TikTok does.”
Check out a snippet from Mayer’s conversation at TheGrill above.
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