This content was created by Eric Siu. This content was uploaded by Eric Siu. This is a YouTube episode titled "The TikTokification of Everything | Ep. 2627" (published 2023-12-08T15:00:31+00:00). It’s a recorded conversation/podcast-style discussion between Eric Siu and Neil Patel about the trend of platforms adopting TikTok-style short-form video ("TikTokification"), platform examples (Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snap Spotlight, Stories), and the broader theme of copying/replication in tech and marketing — plus practical advice on leveraging those tactics for growth. The clip includes examples of creators rapidly growing by using Reels/Shorts, commentary on when copying is acceptable (not stealing IP), and ends with a standard video/podcast call-to-action.
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All right, so we're going to talk about the TikTokification of everything. Let me explain what that means. So when you look at, okay, TikTok, everyone knows what TikTok is, right? But when you look at Instagram now, what do you got? You got Reels. When you look at Snap, they also have their version. I think it's called Spotlight or something. When you look at YouTube, YouTube has Shorts. Facebook has Reels as well too. And so what is happening right now is everything is becoming TikTokified. I've seen, by the way, I don't know if you know this, Neil, there's someone you and I both know But he had like 4,000 followers on Instagram maybe like 6, 7, 8 months ago. Now he has like 200,000 on Instagram. And I was just like, what happened? And then he has a friend too. Like, I'm just like, wait, this person went from like 1,000 to 70, 80,000 followers. What is happening? And they're just literally going to town on Reels, which is their version of TikTok.
Dude, you want to know what's funny? It's not just everything's getting TikTokified. It happens with any type of business. So for example, if OpenAI is the latest craze in the tech industry with ChatGPT, Google will end up copying, Facebook will end up copying, Amazon will end up copying. What's happened in the business world is big change I saw as an entrepreneur years and years ago when I used to build software, it was tough, it was expensive, it would take a lot of time. But once the cloud came out, right? Like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, It became really easy for people to pop up companies. It's now made it so easy for people to just copy and replicate. And you're seeing that for everything now, not just software, but if something's working for someone, people are just replicating. Why wouldn't you? If something works for your competitor, you should try it out too. If not, you're just going to lose market share.
It's silly.
In your marketing, if something's working really well for your competition, what do you do? You try the same tactics, the same channel, the same strategy. And there's nothing wrong with that. And it's so funny, people used to hate so much on in the past, oh, you're just copying, you're just taking the great ideas. I used to get a lot of hate for that. And I'm like, yes, but if it works, why wouldn't I use it too? That's what big corporations do.
I don't think there's anything like, at the end of the day, if you're not like stealing IP or anything like that, like copying to me is just drawing inspiration from somebody else. Copying to me is just a way of learning and it's a way of iterating and making it your own. And so, when you look at how when Instagram created stories, I believe whoever was dating the Snapchat founder at the time, God, I don't know who it— I don't know if he's married to this person now, but it was like some actress. But she's like, Mark Zuckerberg has to copy my man's features, blah, blah, blah. But it's like at the end of the day, everyone else started doing stories. Not only did Instagram start doing stories, let's see, WhatsApp added stories, LinkedIn added stories for a period of time.
Yeah.
And so I think even— did YouTube have stories for a little bit? I think YouTube had stories for a little bit too. They've deprecated them. But the main thing here is that they're like, oh, this is working for this company. I've learned something here. I want to try to iterate on it for myself and see if it actually works. And if it does, good.
Dude, on your WhatsApp, have you ever seen people post stories? Do you ever check them out?
Hardly ever. I know.
Maybe in international markets people check them out, but in the US, I don't think it's used that often.
Yeah. So I mean, look, point here is that the TikTokification of everything, like, that's fine. It's just whatever people like to say, call it the meta or whatever the game that's working in the moment. Like, this is the game that's working right now and the people that are capitalizing, they're doing really well. And I find that for us, like with this podcast, cutting it up into Shorts, like Neil puts it on his channel, I cut it into Shorts on my channel as well and it does pretty well. And so it's like, why wouldn't we do more of this? Because at the end of the day for these social platforms, They need to manage the attention that they bring in and their job is to control your attention. And so, why wouldn't they do it?
Dude, totally agree with that. Start copying more in your marketing. You don't need to plagiarize. You don't need to steal people's IP, but start copying where it makes sense. You'll grow faster.
And by the way, like, you know, earlier there's in this wave of podcasts that we did. So, I cited Rand Fishkin. I cited Glenn Ossoff as well. So, we're giving credit. Now, are we necessarily copying? No, we're just saying, hey, so we took the idea that they had and we made it into an idea baby with our thoughts. And that's what it is at the end of the day. So don't hold anything too sacred. Just don't do anything that's damaging to someone and don't steal someone's IP. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe, and check out the next video over here. And we'll see you tomorrow.
