Building Addictive Products by Copying TikTok and Omegle Strategy
I use many products from local and non-local products, whether it is a game or a social media for some reason I don’t set up a profile or I don’t get addicted to opening them every 3 hours. You might say you are not a phone user but I am a hard phone user, I spend 8+ hours on my phone every day. let me take you back to 2020, during COVID I was a TikTok addict, I used to use TikTok for more than 12 hours a day. I get tricked so easily open the app after closing I couldn’t control myself. and this is not only my issue, TikTok Addiction is a thing that affects millions of people.
This article is not about how to hurt people or make them addicted to the point where they get sick … instead, it is more about how to make your business ( product ) addictive so that people can spend more time and money 😈. That’s what we want right !!!
Introduction
in this case study we will see TikTok and Omegle Strategies on how they make their product addictive so that we can prepare a formula that we can use, and by using that formula we will implement it on a product. if this seems interesting let’s get started.
TikTok
Product Overview
What is TikTok? TikTok is a short-form, video-sharing app that allows users to create and share 15-second to 3-minute videos, on any topic. based on the Wallaroo Media statistics in 2024 TikTok is available in over 160 countries and has over 1.1 billion users. So what is it about TikTok that’s so addicting and popular?
1. Super easy onboarding
Users don’t even need to create an account to interact with the contents. As soon as they open the app, there’s already video playing. It’s not even going to ask your permission to play a video or let you pick a video you want to see. Why Because We don’t want users to think!!! why? Because they overthink.
Rule #1: Don’t make your users think
Imagine YouTube, a similar product but for longer content to make users watch your video you have to make your title clickable and must have an attractive thumbnail image so that a user interacts with your video but in TikTok users interact with the video without even deciding what to watch 😈.
Rule #2: Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away
As we can learn from the book Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away in TikTok’s case the important element is the user interacting with the video. how many clicks does that take? 0 Clicks because the content is already playing when you open the app.
The other good onboarding strategy they used was the tutorial. the first thing you will see is how to open the next video. it will tell you to swipe from bottom to top and wait for you to do it. when you do it the contents change so easily making it so easy to interact and what makes it better is whether you swipe faster or slower you will have a full-screen video to the next video that makes your user happy. and here are some onboarding tutorials by TikTok.
2. Infinite scroll video feed
if users know can interact with your content you need Infinite content for users
- They made content creation easy for everyone by adding a built-in camera, editing, and fun filters to get more content from the users
- They created a feature called duet where users can make videos reacting to others’ content
Then the algorithm part prepares the feed that you interact with. To do that they use AI Algorithm that ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In ultricies sapien dolor, nec ultricies … 🙄 I really don’t know how the AI works but the more you see a video the better your feed matches your interest and also once you have an account it pushes you to share contact, and connect with Facebook to get to show your friends and family contents and much your interest.
Rule #3: Give a consistent value and avoid disappointing experiences.
Key Takeaways
These are the takeaways from the TikTok analysis:
- TikTok has easy onboarding
- Interactions are as easy as scrolling & swiping
- less decision-making by the user
- Continues rewarding by Infinite scroll
Omegle
Product Overview
Omegle was ( discontinued ) a free, web-based online video and text chating service that allowed users to socialize with Strangers. if you don’t know about this app you can hear people say this product is addictive the product is harmful and even got multiple Lawsuits because of things like cyberbullying, sexual content, fraud, exposure of personal information, etc. with all this information As of January 2023 Omegle had 70.6 million users and +3 million Daily active users. So you might ask “Why do people use such a product”?
This app is the best example of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Minimum Lovable Product (MLP). The product doesn’t have any fancy UI to make it trendy. The product doesn’t have many features to attract users.
User Onboarding
Remember the Rules we had for TikTok. This app follows those rules and sometimes it makes them better.
Don’t make your users think
Users only have 2 options to get started which are text or video chat
Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away
There are 3 interactable elements on the onboarding. the interest input, text button, or video button. The user flow looks like this:
- Write your interest.
- Click on Text or Video.
The fact that users don’t have to create an account or sign in makes users try the product so fast, but that doesn’t mean the users would stay on the app for log. so we will talk about 2 things that will make users stay for longer than expected.
Skipping
if you don’t like the person you are matched with you can skip them. Another user might skip you too if they are not interested in you. (Am sure no one will skip you)
Infinite and Instant Match
Whether you are skipped by someone or you skipped someone you will be automatically matched with another user with the same interest in the next 3 to 5 seconds. you don’t even need to touch your phone to use this app it just works. The one issue was the matching time since the product has many active users they managed to decrease the wait time to 3 to 5 seconds which is very fast but it is a load time so we expect a user drop off but No. Why? That led us to FOMO.
What is FOMO? FOMO is an abbreviation for “fear of missing out”: a worried feeling that you may miss exciting events that other people are going to, especially caused by things you see on social media. Most users see many funny videos on other social media about how something happened on Omegle. So when every they see the loading screen, They don’t know what to expect, so they wait. That makes users get hooked and addicted to the point where the get glued to their phone
Key Takeaways
These are the takeaways from the Omegle analysis:
- Super easy onboarding
- Automatic interactions
- less decision-making by the user
- Continues rewarding by Infinite scroll
Extracting the Formula
Based on our analysis strategies behind TikTok and Omegle boil down to these points:
Get Started Easily
Both TikTok and Omegle let users get what they want without account creation or Two-factor authentication. They just give you the juice without the friction.
Easy Interactions
TikTok’s scrolling & swiping Interactions are so handy for the lazy users it is interacting with and Omegle’s skip button is like opening a portal random user’s computer. Giving this kind of UX lets the users spend more time on the product
Endless Value
TikTok’s Infinite Scroll and Omegle’s Instant Match were other powerful features that hooked people into getting addicted and investing more time in the product.
Less Decision Making
Both platforms don’t want you to think before you wanna do something. They just do what they think you want and learn from your usage. By continuous learning, they managed to make your experience better.
Applying the Formula
Let’s see how we can apply these formulas to other types of products:
Ride Sharing App
Get Started Easily: Allow instant access to hailing rides without a signup process upfront because the user wants a ride as soon as possible so let them have it, if you want their data you can ask them when they finish the trip.
Easy Interactions: Why not make a one-click pickup to call the driver and also learn user behavior based on user usage.
Endless Value: Loyalty rewards, personalized recommendations for new destinations to remind users about your product, and hooking them get by showing the estimated prices to previous destinations.
Less Decision Making: Auto preferences from past trips rather than make choices. so that they can get what they want in Less Friction, Time, and Decision.
News App
Get Started Easily: Jump straight to browsing top headlines without signup. If you want users to subscribe wait till the users get hooked into a news or article then tell them to sign in to finish the article since they wanna finish what they started they will listen to you. (You’re the Boss 😈)
Easy Interactions: Intuitive swipe navigation between articles, adding text-to-speech features so that users won’t have to read the contents.
Endless Value: Continually updated breaking news feed and after reading articles showing related news and follow-ups to the previous content so that they can continue interacting.
Less Decision Making: Don’t show them news cards for them to pick. (when users think and their CPU overheats) Instead, make them read the first part of whatever your Algorithm remanded them to read and let them swipe to see the next content and double tap to read the full content. if the user is not touching anything automatically skip article in the 15 to 30 seconds. What if the user wants to read the article? Don’t worry, they will swipe back.
Just like that, you can make your products addictive so that your users can spend more time and money on your product
Conclusion
Through the process of reverse-engineering what made TikTok and Omegle so habit-forming, we extracted a 4 formula for designing addictive products
- Get Started Easily
- Easy Interactions
- Endless Value
- Less Decision Making
While addictiveness has downsides if taken too far, when harnessed ethically these principles inspire lasting engagement and growth. They serve as guiding tenets for UX designers, growth hackers and product builders in any industry. Apply them responsibly to delight your customers.
Let me know if you would add or change anything in this initial conclusion! The goal is to recap the framework and reiterate the potential upside if leveraged conscientiously.
