Recently I have seen many posts that relate to social links and different social media platforms being used. My question is “What is up with TikTok?”.
TikTok!? now I know what you might be thinking “How would I possibly use TikTok to promote my games?”. Well it is simple, players want to feel like they have a better connection with the makers of the game. Many developers try to do this by making Discords as well as YouTube channels. Well guess what, the EASIEST way to do this would be to make TikToks! They are simple and very easy to do and do not require much time.
TikTok can be seen to have a massive platform and has kids in the EXACT age range that now make up most of Roblox.This platform SHOULD and NEEDS to be added everywhere including groups,user profiles and games! It is a market that we are missing out on.
Let me know how you feel about this, it is open for discussion.
I don’t think integrating TikTok into Roblox is a good idea. There were some conflicts between people saying that TikTok is a Chinese spyware in the past - Roblox will have to also consider these conflicts. Regarding that, there was also a lawsuit.
I downloaded the source and was trying to find it awhile back. I didn’t get too far as it was a decently sized source and I was having problems getting the apk to correctly load in my editor.
This doesn’t seem very actionable. There isn’t much or any correlation between TikTok and Roblox in this thread, nor do I think that TikTok is a very effective platform for media sharing. It seems better geared for non-game content creators.
The only takeaway I’ve gotten is from the second paragraph and that doesn’t amount to much. How does TikTok make developer-community communication easier and better than YouTube (Community) or a Discord server? These seem like very effective, well-received and well-known solutions in themselves while TikTok feels more niche. What does TikTok do that those two can’t? There appears to be some implication there about a “better platform” but I apologise if it’s not this way.
Adding things for the sake of adding them is counterproductive and a waste of resources. Could you perhaps specify within the OP or in a response how this will better improve your development or influencer experience? I’ve yet to see your take on this.
A feature request should always boast a strong use case to kick off discussion as opposed to just asking for a feature and then allowing others to carry it. There’s no use case and this request overall doesn’t seem strong enough to warrant it being added.
If you feel something “needs” to be added and want others to feel that same way including the team responsible for integrating website features, then it’d be worth convincing in depth that exploring this option is worth the resources and time investment over using the existing Stars program or creating my own influencer program.
Hey thanks for your feedback and I am happy to answer some of your concerns.
So concerning this I want to just make it more clear that the intention of adding TikTok was to allow the option for more developer engagement in other platforms outside of Twitter and Youtube. I felt like if content creators used TikTok and engaged more with the community on this platform it would actually boost their games (similar to like a YouTuber creating a game).
Here I mentioned that TikTok is currently being utilized by MANY MANY individuals in the age range that we see most Roblox users now. Knowing what YouTube does for many why not allow for the same opportunities on TikTok?
I hope this sort of explained my point of view better, and I for sure see how I can improve my post in terms of being more descriptive.
While Roblox Developers see this as “negative feature,” I would like to mention that Roblox is moving into China and has already confirmed this several times. A Chinese app being declined from promoting content on the site is ridiculous. I have never seen an app so big, with my fan base of my game Captive tweeting TikTok links to me about their gameplay in Captive like it’s a youtube Let’s Play.
With that said, I full support the inclusion of TikTok being added to Roblox as I see it as one of the most beneficial ways to promote content towards the target audience: kids.
(we should also add Instagram but that’s for another day)
I completely forgot to mention Roblox moving into China, the fact that it is moving into China would mean that their social media presence would have to move into China as well.
I am not really knowledgeable about this, but I think they don’t have apps like Twitter and such to use. So I’m not completely sure their rules in China, about using TikTok. Though if it is one of the apps that they are allowed to use freely that would probably be one of the biggest cases for Roblox to actually use TikTok.
And the fact that TikTok is such a quickly growing social media app anyway should also be motivation for this. I mean opinion on the app itself is irrelevant you cannot tell me that it is not popular. If so many kids are using it, it would not hurt Roblox to be on there. As well as if anything it would further promote Roblox. And it would not really require much resources either, I mean it’s just making short videos.
As it has already been said, TikTok is a Chinese spyware app, and they had to pay millions of dollars due to COPPA violations (storing data from underaged users). Also, it is banned in many countries because of promoting pornography. For a platform for all ages like Roblox, this is unacceptable. TikTok is the international version of Douyin. So, it isn’t available in China. I don’t know any developer that uses it in order to communicate with their fans. If anybody is using it, they are just doing it for fun, not to promote their games.
In the Wikipedia article, the “Legal Issues” category is pretty long. Read it yourself: TikTok - Wikipedia
Do you think that it’s worth implementing a whole new feature just for one person? No. Personally, I find it pretty useless and from the 1.5 billion people that use it, only less than 10 people are developers that use it to promote their games there. TikTok is better to be used as a personal social media rather than a newsfeed.
I was going to say exactly this. You generally use this as well as something like Instagram to post about yourself. Also having a TikTok account doesn’t mean you instantly become famous.
I’d like to counter this. TikTok should not be associated with Roblox. TikTok raises huge privacy concerns for all users. It’s so serious I even saw in the news the U.S. is considering banning TikTok because of this.
To sum it up, they collect more data than what’s necessary to operate the app (yes, more than Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).
They’re able to download and execute code that’s downloaded through a ZIP file (think private modules, you require the asset ID and you don’t know what code is run). They also have security measures in place that adjusts the code if it realizes you’re trying to reverse engineer the app.
Sure, TikTok can make you famous, but some people claim (I can’t verify) that your first posts are designed to gain attention so you get addicted to staying on the platform.
Ignoring the privacy concerns for the purpose of part of this post, and I am not going to argue to put tiktok on the roblox page at this point.
The idea of tik tok potentially sharing your first few posts for virality only works if the content is actually good. There are hundreds of comments in the roblox related tiktoks I’ve done that are happy for the game and that they found the developer tiktok. Which means there is a fanbase for the game that was also already on tiktok. Just about everything funny or interesting has a shot on tiktok virality. I think Roblox is starting to help out a bit with small game virality with the new “recommended for you” sort. There is a bit to learn from tiktok, if not for the privacy concerns.
As for if the US bans tiktok, I’ll have to respect the decision. More followers on tiktok in 2 months than a year and a half of work building up a roblox dev instagram done. The power of algorithms, I hope the next big thing takes the good of tiktok without the spyware. But are we all going to act like all social media isnt a bit spy inducing? Yes I’ve read that tiktok is worse, but I already had it installed when all this came out, what good would it to be to uninstall at this point.
Edit: if there were not spyware concerns tiktok would be great for posting content to your userbase. Even without the help of the link on the game page, Adopt me tiktok has 585k followers since late April 2020 relative to 750k subs on youtube since Jan 2020.
TikTok has some extreme controversy around it being aggressive spyware that led it to become banned in India, even considered to be a national threat by the US (Trump is considering banning TikTok). I’m going to bet 100% Roblox won’t add it as a social link option since they’ll have to take this into consideration.
In addition to the counties who banned TikTok, I don’t know how to integrate Roblox into it. TikTok is made for short video’s. As far as I know, you can’t attach links to a video. That’s why I think that TikTok shouldn’t be a social link option.
Here is where I disagree, I have already seen numerous Roblox TikToks by kids being made in Adopt Me and other games. Kids do wanna make TikToks. If games actually integrated them selves in some way to make funny TikToks in this day in age I actually thing it would boost traffic.
I still heavily believe even now that TikTok if used correctly to market your game can make it successful. And regarding the link part, most people attach a link in their bio. TikTok is all the rave currently, I am even surprised Roblox as a company has not gotten on the platform yet.
Right but with the popularity of TikTok continuing to grow many players would probably like to attach their TikTok account to gain more popularity. Just like if you have a Twitter doesn’t mean you have to post all Roblox related content.
