Before 2018, in social media (eg: Facebook, youtube) your feed of content was primarily from creators whom you had subscribed to. The algorithm kind of sorted the most engaging content among the creators you followed and presented to you in a form of feed.

And for a creator to be big in social media- they had to earn loyal subscribers. The could grow in number, only if they pleased more of the existing subscriber.

But with the advent of Tiktok, everything shifted.

Tiktok’s algorithm suggested what to watch next-based on what the algorithm thinks you may like, among the global pool of creators, not just the creators you subscribed to.

The concept of subscriber was not there.

So this concept of finding the best content for you , from the entire global pool of content sphere- just took off.

Tiktok became an instant sensation in the world of entertainment.

Seeing that this model works, in terms of keeping user’s hooked for a long time- every other social media copied this model.

At first facebook copied it and put it in reels.
Then youtube copied it and put it in shorts.

Then youtube implemented this largely in their long form content too.

Then twitter did it.
And then every other social media did this too.

Definitely it increased the engagement of users & advertisement dollars in these platforms, otherwise they would not have done it.

But, there is a problem. In a lot of the cases, I really care for the niche content of some creators. But, the algorithm just never shows them to me anymore.
This is not good for niche creators, who does not want to create content that has mass appeal, but rather wants to create content that serves only a selected few in a niche . The current systems tends to put rocket fuel in the posts that have mass appeal and has good engagement initially through some engagement bait . And for content that does not have initial engagement, it just nukes it .

So, the reach of posts have become – “All or nothing” for the niche creators. The algorithm is forcing the niche creators to make broad appeal content.

A “subscriber” has become a vanity metric.
Your favorite niche content creators are no more in your feed.
And many niche creators/influencers are struggling because of the tiktokification of the internet