Tik Tok Review

Tik Tok is video sharing application (app) that allows users to upload short videos of less than 60 seconds for other viewers to see. This app allows users with over 1000 followers to live stream and has social media features. The features include commenting and allowing users to like and send videos within the app as well as outside the app. It is free to download and relatively straight forward to use. It has 100 million Americans are monthly active users today (Sherman, 2020).

Tik Tok has great usability. Please see the screenshot with the directions of what each button links to. The thing I like most about this app, is that it is funny and I can look at the videos when I only have a minute to relax. The Videos are short, so I am able to actually take a second and laugh. I also love the recommended videos they suggest. They must have great algorithms, because they are quite accurate, at least for me.

My friends and I send each other videos all the time, so also am glad the app became popular enough that we can send the videos through the app itself. Please see the screenshot of the videos that we have shared with each other. This is even better than recommendations, because they are personalized recommendations from a friend that knows you.  First you find a video to send, then you click on the little white arrow on the left hand side of the screen. This allows you to direct message the video to your friends.

You can pick a friend, and the video shows up in their messages.  It looks like this:

The friend can click the videos and watch them. They can even scroll by swiping up and down through the feed, in the same way from the home screen.

My recommendations are that the searching for videos is nearly impossible. My classmates have had similar issues. They have also suggested parental controls. I saw that a feature was recently added that allows a person to bookmark videos, and this is also helpful. If you hear about a video, it is actually easier to google it and see the Tik Tok video on Youtube then  search in the application. If you click to favorite the video,  it is still impossible to find. I would suggest to have a way to save the favorite videos in folders. Then you can save videos in a more categorized way.

Another recommendation I would have is to create a tv version of the application. I can stream it to my tv, but it is still small. It would be nicer to have a tv formatted app that can be accessed like Netflix and Hulu.

My last suggestion is they fix the share to other applications option. Sometimes it sends the wrong videos if you send it through a text message instead of through the app.

Overall, I really like Tik Tok, and my review is very positive.