The Economics of Attention: Will TikTok Subsume Twitter?

It’s easy to make a case for why short-form video is the final form of internet content. After all, it engages all the senses in a way that mere images, text, or sound could never compare. However, this would be overly reductionist.

Let’s break it down. Content platforms include the likes of TikTok, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix, and more. Every content platform consists of a dominant content modality. TikTok has short-form video, Pinterest has evergreen images, Twitter has text, Spotify has audio, and YouTube has long-form video. Each content modality has unique authoring properties and unique consumption properties.

• It’s much easier to write a Tweet than post a TikTok, so Twitter is more real-time than TikTok. Conversely, video is more engaging than text, so TikTok has more users and longer session times than Twitter.
• While audio is less engaging than short-form video, it can be consumed on the go, so Spotify is used during gym sessions where TikTok isn’t.
• Long-form video is more engaging than audio. If you are at a desktop and depending on how focused you need to be on your main work, you may reach for one or the other as your background entertainment choice.

When analyzing an idea for a content platform, you can’t just think about the value of a piece of content in isolation. You need to think about the inherent properties of content vis-a-vis authoring and consumption, and you need to think through all the second-order implications.