I don't use TikTok so maybe I'm offbase, but I tihnk while technically it could've existed without mobile, socially I'm not so sure.

I wouldn't under estimate the amount of friction reduced in having an app on your phone which a) is always with you, b) can also record top quality video and c) has a data plan good enough to upload there and then.

This is my read as well. The ability to record video clips as easily as a person with a keyboard can tweet was the true kindling for the viral fire.

To take it a notch further, it's the video editing simplicity that really blew TikTok up.

> To take it a notch further, it's the video editing simplicity that really blew TikTok up.

Yup, definitely. Effective mobile editing was a big driver of it's success.

That being said, while it's definitely more effective and popular on mobile how much of that is just down to more people using the internet on mobile relative to desktop.

This is unlike Maps or Uber which only make sense with mobile and always available location.

Not exactly tiktok, but something similar was tried on desktop - Dailybooth was a YC startup which enabled users to take a photo from the desktop website and post it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DailyBooth

> I wouldn't under estimate the amount of friction reduced in having an app on your phone which

I wish I could do software development from my phone the way people casually watch tiktok videos. The least unproductive thing I can currently do when trapped with only a phone is read HN.

Something like Uber could have been built on top of SMS, though. It didn't necessarily need Smartphones.

(Perhaps SMS plus some feature-phone-level of GPS integration.)

I don't think that Uber through SMS would be strong enough to compete with taxi services.

One of the core features that made me use Uber was the map - I could see where the driver is going and how far away is he. Also, the app is localised into language that I can understand and I can see the price upfront without having to worry about getting scammed. Recently I had to book a taxi over the phone at the end of the world (literally - Ushuaia) in a language that I can barely speak and the experience was rather stressful in comparison with using an app.

Seeing a price up front is just a different business model and localization could be easily handled with a setting on your account. Neither is tech-dependent, both could have worked over SMS too.

Real-time mapping would be tricker if that's really a killer feature for you.

Some real life traditional taxi services used to offer pre-agreed fixed fairs. But many of them were regulated away.

For Uber though there's the driver side experience as well as the customer side. I don't know if you could've made something seemless enough for drivers to use from an old feature phone

Drivers have a car. So they could have used a bigger device. Eg a laptop, or something with a touch screen.

Or a voice connection with an operator.

Not really. The hard thing here is not the network transport but user interface.

If people can learn the Snapchat UX, they can learn some SMS text adventure style Uber.

People can be illiterate, dyslexic, inebriated, dumb or with poor command of the language. Good luck with free-text interface.

You'll pretty much would have had human operators over every interaction. That very much hinders the Uber-like growth of the service.

If you can support 95% of the market (with mechanical means), you can capture 95% of the market.

That wouldn't be 95% of market, more like 50-60%, and a strain to use even for those apt. Not everyone is an Infocom playing nerd.

Normal people use SMS just fine all the time.

Falling back to a human operator isn't that bad either: just charge people a little bit extra to talk to a human.

TikTok's success is primarily about the creator tools, not the viewing experience. Making video editing mobile-friendly and accessible to more people is what enabled the proliferation of short-form content.

Wait…how do you expect TikTok users to upload videos so easily if it is on desktop? TikTok wouldn’t be TikTok anymore.