TikTok Boom

Last week was an… interesting one in regard to TikTok. The massively-successful social network app with 50 million daily active users is in the sights of the US House of Representatives. They feel the app should be banned but that is a real slippery slope and one that could backfire drastically. Let’s rewind a bit to see how we got here. A Chinese company called ByteDance owns TikTok. For a while the app floundered as a network that never caught on in its original incarnation Music.ly. They rebranded into TikTok and shifted from a music lipsyncing app into the video-focused…

Emmanuel, Don’t Do It

Animals and internet videos are a great mix. Nothing new there. We’ve had countless animal videos go viral over the years. This time around we have an unusual species gain the TikTok spotlight: Emmanuel the emu. Taylor Blake runs a hobby farm called Knuckle Bump Farm. She has a variety of animals there and that includes Emmanuel the emu. Blake has posted over 200 videos to her TikTok account. Lately Emmanuel has decided to crash the party and hog the spotlight. @knucklebumpfarms Emmanuel and I wanted to pop in and say THANK YOU for all of the love and support!…

Dancing to Text Tones

Leave it to the Wide World of TikTok to showcase Austin & Marideth (@Cost_N_Mayor). This pair has come up with a stellar video of dance moves… set to iPhone text tones. There’s 40 in all and this pair certainly has the moves. I don’t know about you, but I find this fun an wildly impressive. It’s also not the first time I’ve seen awesome mixing of tech and music on the platform. @cost_n_mayor Reply to @krustykrustykrab ♬ original sound – Cost n’ Mayor Here’s a link to their video.

TikTok Book Scamming

Leave it to “trends” on TikTok to come up with terrible ideas. The latest viral trend, on the social network that’s definitely not funneling data to China (we promise!), is to buy Kindle books on Amazon, then return them within the allowed window for a full refund. Claire Woodcock at Vice has more of this awful idea. The #ReadAndReturn challenge drew attention to Amazon’s Kindle return policy, which states that readers can “cancel an accidental book order within seven days.” But what’s been presented as a literary community “life hack” is hurting romance-fantasy authors like Lisa Kessler’s bottom line. Vice As…

Grunge Is Old

Get ready Xennials and older folks because I’m about to say something that will make you shudder: Gen Z has deemed Grunge music as Oldies. 😱 I know, right? But there is a big plus to this admission of age: rediscovery. When it comes to Nirvana, songs the band put out are reaching 20 years old. But, because of TikTok and videos talking about “songs you should know”, these tracks are making some big moves. Richie Assaly at the Toronto Star has more. As of this week, “Something In The Way” has been used to soundtrack nearly 200,000 TikTok videos.…

Fun With Excel on TikTok

Two things I never expected to find entertaining when put together are Microsoft Excel and TikTok. Those are two diametrically opposed things. One is fun and has whimsy, while the other is a Chinese-owned social network that’s basically overtaken Facebook Meta. I kid, I kid. In actuality, Excel can be a wondrous tool in the hands of someone who knows even 25% of its power. I’ve seen colleagues work their magic on a spreadsheet in seconds simply because they knew a certain formula or function. Enter Kat Norton, an Excel guru that Quartz has profiled. Norton found herself in similar…