Alex Zhu had a “$1 billion idea” to combine education and social media, making it short-form and mobile. His new platform would let users watch sh

How user obsession made Musical.ly a $1 billion company

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2021-10-27 17:30:09

Alex Zhu had a “$1 billion idea” to combine education and social media, making it short-form and mobile. His new platform would let users watch short instructional videos on their phones. People could be both consumers and creators, sharing what they know.

It was a complete failure. Zhu had just enough money in the pot to start a new project, Musical.ly, which let users upload home-made entertainment videos. That became his billion-dollar idea. In 2017, Musical.ly was merged into TikTok. Lessons Zhu learned:

Light content. If you want to build a new UGC platform with social elements, the content has to be extremely light. “Education is a little bit against human nature”. If you look at how people use their phones, it’s mostly for communication, for entertainment, and to play games.

Ease of use. “The content creation and consumption has to be within seconds rather than minutes or hours.” The easier it is to upload content, the more content you will get. The easier it is to view great content in a short space of time, the more users you will have.