Thread by @lennysan

So many valuable nuggets of wisdom about building consumer apps from Alex Zhu's chat with @joshelman (artisanally transcribed by @blakeir)

See thread below for some of my favorites 👇
notion.so/Alex-Zhu-TikTo…

1/ "If you want to build a new user-generated content platform or social network, then the content has to be extremely light. The content creation AND consumption need to happen within seconds, not minutes."

2/ "For a new social platform to take off, your early adopters need to be young. Especially teenagers in the U.S. — why? They have a lot of time and they are creative. You won't need to spend as much for distribution. Zero cost distribution."

3/ "Musical.ly launched with a lot of hacks. App Store used to let you make your app name really long. The search engine on the App Store used to give more weight to the application name vs. keywords defined. So...they put a really long app name with all keywords."

4/ "Initially, Musical.ly focused on utility at first. Before you have the critical mass of users, you have to focus on utility. And then once you have enough users, you can start building a community around it. Come for the utility, stay for the community."

5/ "We [stayed] really close to our users. We call it participatory design. We talk to hundreds of users on WeChat constantly. We have daily conversations. Not only about product, but also to understand what they think and what they like in pop culture."

6/ "Building an influencer community is very similar to building a new country/ economy from the ground up. Let use an analogy: Musical.ly will be America in this analogy, and YouTube/Instagram will be Europe..."

6b/ "...How do you convince creators from other regions (social platforms) to move to America (Musical.ly)? You effectively create the American dream.
People in Europe (IG) will start to realize that this "normal" person went to America (Musical.ly)..."

6c/ "... and became super rich. Maybe I can do the same? This will lead to a lot of people migrating to your country (platform)."

7/ "The first thing that users seek when they join a social media platform is fame. However, once they have the fame — it's not enough. They need to monetize. If the platform is a platform that can generate the most revenue for influencers, then they will stick around."