In This Issue: How Does TikTok’s Algorithm Really Work? / Why Millennials Aren’t Leaving TikTok / TikTok Paying Creators For Meeting Search Metrics / Google Downranking Zombie Websites / Virologists Intentionally Misled New York Times During COVID / Epic Games Store Coming To Android / I Used ChatGPT As A Reporting Assistant. It Didn’t Go Well / How Often People Listen To Podcasts / Joe Rogan’s Show Is Almost 3X Bigger Than The Next Most Popular / How Instagram Got Its Mojo Back / Grow Your Newsletter to 60,000+
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
Share
Refer a friend
New week, new links:
How Does TikTok’s Algorithm Really Work?: “According to the study’s findings, between 30% and 50% of the first 1,000 videos TikTok users encounter are exploiting their past interests. Recommended videos are driven by a number of factors, most importantly whether the user liked a similar video, as well as who they follow on the platform. Fewer seem to be driven by the percentage of the video a user watched.”
Why Millennials Aren’t Leaving TikTok: “Whether or not kids are novelty-seekers, they are, fundamentally, a disfavored minority. They want to do things that the platforms don't want them to do – like converse without being overheard by authority figures, including their parents and their schools (also: cops and future employers, though kids may not be thinking about them as much).
In other words, kids pay intrinsically lower switching costs than adults, because a platform will always do less for them than it will for grownups. This is a characteristic kids share with other supposedly technophilic, novelty-seeking "early adopters," from sex-workers to terrorists, from sexual minorities to trolls, from political dissidents to fascists. For those groups, the cost of mastering a new technology and assembling a community around it is always more likely to be worth bearing than it would be for people who are well-served by existing tools.”
TikTok Paying Creators For Meeting Search Metrics: “TikTok is leaning in even more to its app being used like a search engine.
Creators making money on the platform will now be paid based in part on how well their content meets what other users are searching for. TikTok calls this metric “search value,” and it’s one of four core elements in determining creator payouts.”
Google Downranking Zombie Websites: “We’re making algorithmic enhancements to our core ranking systems to ensure we surface the most helpful information on the web and reduce unoriginal content in search results.
New and improved spam policies: We’re updating our spam policies to keep the lowest-quality content out of Search, like expired websites repurposed as spam repositories by new owners and obituary spam.”
Virologists Intentionally Misled New York Times During COVID: “An extraordinary set of Slack messages was accidentally released by a congressional committee last summer. They reveal top evolutionary virologists telling one another that they find the “lab leak” theory of the coronavirus’s genesis plausible, but that, for reasons of politics — they didn’t want to give ammunition to people they saw as alarmist about some virus research — they should steer journalists away from it. The messages also include specific discussion about how to manage then-New York Times public health reporter Donald McNeil.”
Epic Games Store Coming To Android: “With plans to launch its own game store on iOS, it’s now been announced that the Epic Games Store is coming to Android.
Teased in a post on Twitter/X, the Epic Games Store is “coming to iOS and Android.” The store is said to be a “true multi-platform store.” The Epic Games Store on PC distributes games mostly on Windows, as an alterative to Valve’s Steam.
Developers will keep 88% of revenue generated by their game, with Epic taking a 12% cut. That’s well below Google’s cut in the Play Store, which is as high as 30%. In 2021, though, Google announced that developers would only pay a 15% cut on the first $1 million in revenue.”
I Used ChatGPT As A Reporting Assistant. It Didn’t Go Well: “Extracting information and summarizing long documents is often cited as among the biggest strengths of tools like ChatGPT. My results were mixed. After some back and forth, I coaxed the agent into extracting the details and quantities of the hazardous chemicals that were released in the accident and format the information in a table listing the chemical name, the quantity released, what it is typically used for and its effects on human health. But it took a few tries. Where it did save time was in explaining specialized information that might have otherwise taken a time-consuming Google search to figure out—such as decoding railroad car numbers.
At times, the tool was too eager to please, so I asked it to tone it down a little: “You can skip the chit chat and pleasantries.” Users can instruct the bot to change the tone or style of their responses, but telling it that it is a lawyer doesn’t make it more accurate.
Overall, the sessions were a lot of work trying to figure out where the agent got its information, and redirecting it with precise instructions. It took a long time.”
How Often People Listen To Podcasts: “61% of the US population over 12 have listened to a podcast. This growth for a medium so young is unusual. On average, they listen to 9 per week. Even if those podcasts were only 10 minutes long, that’s a significant time commitment. That tells us that podcasts are very sticky and that the audience will consume the medium voraciously. The opportunity is to create something that allows them to connect with your content, in a way that is deep, meaningful and prone to calls to action.”
Joe Rogan’s Show Is Almost 3X Bigger Than The Next Most Popular:
How Instagram Got Its Mojo Back: “Threads has been a surprising success. It had a record-breaking debut in July, when over 100 million people downloaded it in the first week (thanks to the fact that Instagram prompted users to do so). Many of those curious early people quit, and for a while in late summer the app seemed like tumbleweeds. But by December it was the most downloaded app in the App Store. (It finally launched in Europe that month.) Your mileage may vary in terms of how bullish you are on Threads continuing to be a fun or useful platform, but clearly something's working.
The second thing for Instagram that seems to be working is Reels. When the feature launched in 2020, it wasn't an immediate success. An internal report showed that Instagram was having trouble getting creators to actually post, despite having reportedly offered cash incentives to high-profile creators, and that it had low engagement from users, too. Even worse, lots of the videos were straight-up rips from TikTok, watermark and all.
But whether by hook or carrot, Reels content is suddenly more compelling. In fact, I've been enjoying Reels over TikTok lately, which is something I wouldn't have predicted even six months ago. The key? I'm seeing more original videos and fewer reheated TikTok leftovers.”
Grow Your Newsletter To 60,000+ With Packy McCormick: “How did Packy McCormick use online writing to grow his newsletter to over 60,000 subscribers?
In this workshop, Packy’s going to teach us how to be, and how to write, “Not Boring”. By delving into his process, we’ll find new methods of improving our own writing and online entrepreneurship.”
