Facebook Reels, which launched on Instagram as a competitor of TikTok, has expanded to 150 countries as a feature on Facebook.
05.02.2022 - 08:33 / variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticTikTok, the omnipresent video-based social-media app that launched five years ago, has always seemed a less serious, more frivolously youthquakey destination than a number of other online networking services — most obviously Facebook. Yet as Shalini Kantayya’s sprightly, informative documentary “TikTok, Boom.” makes clear, there are more levels to the TikTok phenomenon than there are to almost any other blockbuster app.There are the countless people who consume it: the kids from all over the world who get addicted to watching the up-to-three-minute-long videos (dances, pranks, sexy flaunts, tutorials, monologues, protest messages) as if they were popping Sour Patch Kids.
There are the people who are on it: the makers of those videos, who could be just about anyone and might be doing it just for kicks, though what a lot of them want to be, if they can go viral enough, are influencers — the elite echelon of TikTok stars who have made themselves over into brands, based on a look or a talent or a signature or some combination of the above, and who succeed in attracting the attention of companies who will pay them to be casual endorsers of some product. The saga of TikTok doesn’t end there.
The sheer hugeness of the app is its own paradigm-shifting story. It has been downloaded over two billion times, making it bigger than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or YouTube.
As a result, it has shaken up the hierarchy of the tech universe. And since TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a company based in China, the fact that much of what TikTok is actually about, once you peek beneath the candy-colored surface of its endless-shopping-mall-of-videos, how-I-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-dopamine-hit
.Facebook Reels, which launched on Instagram as a competitor of TikTok, has expanded to 150 countries as a feature on Facebook.
Last month saw a host of Highway Code changes come into force.
Creative Assembly’s Total War: Warhammer 3 is being review bombed on Steam by Chinese users unhappy with the game’s marketing.The game is receiving a large number of negative reviews from Chinese players who felt the marketing in the lead up to Total War: Warhammer 3 was poorly handled and has impacted the experience of playing the game (via PCGamer).Many of the complaints appear to be aimed at the distribution of early copies to influencers. Access to Total War: Warhammer 3 was given to a large number of content creators, many of whom has little interest or understanding of the game.
Jessica Kiang A later-life love story of the gentlest kind, Li Ruijun’s “Return to Dust” is an absorbing, beautifully framed drama that makes a virtue — possibly too much a virtue — of simplicity. The story is straightforward: Two lonely middle-aged people, each barely tolerated by their more worldly family members, are pushed into an arranged marriage, which quietly blossoms into a companionable love match.
Naman Ramachandran Times Internet’s MX TakaTak and ShareChat’s Moj have revealed a strategic merger to create India’s largest short video platform. The combined platform will have 100 million creators, over 300 million Monthly Active Users (MAU), and nearly 250 billion monthly video views.
Married at First Sight Australia bride Selina Chhaur says she was blindsided by her new husband Cody Bromley’s admission that she "wasn’t something I normally go for."WATCH: Cody tells Selina he's not attracted to her on their honeymoonIn the emotionally charged episode, which aired tonight, Chhaur confronted Bromley about the real reason he isn’t attracted to her, sparking a race row that reverberates through the other couples and leaves the experts stunned.“It came as a massive shock to me and it was really upsetting,’’ Chhaur, 32, tells WHO. “He did judge the book by its cover.’’After getting off to a rocky start, during which the personal trainer from Sydney’s Northern Beaches admitted that he was struggling with the lack of sexual attraction to his bride, hairdresser Chhaur decides to “address the elephant in the room’’ and asks if it’s because of her nationality.Cody and Selina have struggled with the issue since their wedding day."I asked him the question, that was actually really hard, and I guess I was a little naïve thinking that no it wouldn’t be that...
Richard Kuipers Family photos, propaganda images and grainy archival footage are manipulated, re-processed and overlaid with wonderfully simple and highly effective animation in “Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish.” This imaginative documentary essay by 36-year-old U.S.-based Chinese artist-animator-filmmaker Lei Lei assembles striking imagery and deeply personal audio recordings to chart his family’s history in China from the late 1950s to the early ’70s. Though it runs a little too long, “Silver Bird” should have a bright future at general film festivals and those specializing in animation.After basing his 2019 feature debut “Breathless Animals” on his mother’s recollections of life in 20th century China, Lei has turned this time to audio interviews he conducted with his father Lei Jiaqi and grandfather Lei Ting in China between 2012 and 2021.
The opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics is just getting under way in Beijing. Overseeing the event is filmmaker Zhang Yimou, back after directing the 2008 Summer Games opener to global acclaim. This time around, Zhang has said the ceremony will have a romantic tone that he hopes will “amaze the whole world.”
New Highway Code rules are expected to result in more ‘crash for cash’ insurance claims, according to a dash cam manufacturer.
Joey King is looking hotter than ever in these new photos!
TikTok is an undeniable force in our society. It has the power to launch music careers, house the homeless, and unite people worldwide.