“There are few
influencers
in the construction market and it is a niche to be exploited,” says Giovany Ramírez, bricklayer and
tiktoker.
His account on the social network of short videos TikTok, @tongastyle, is a funny duo with another bricklayer of Colombian origin. One of his greatest hits shows Tonga on a raft in a pool under construction singing to the sound of La Bamba “I'm not a sailor, I'm a bricklayer”. “One day I told Tonga that her energy had to be transmitted to the world,” says Ramírez. They started with the pandemic, Tonga dances and laughs, and Ramírez makes the typical serious counterpoint. In the background, the work where they work in Mallorca. In less than a year, they have about 150,000 followers with one or two videos a week.
Despite this number of followers and the growing interest of the platforms to attract talent and share some of their profits, Ramírez and Tonga make just 100 euros a month.
At the moment it is an investment of time and the hope that in the future it will be a more stable source of income.
Always, of course, that they continue to grow.
"You have to know the networks, they are like a person who has their needs and you have to know what they might like," explains Ramírez.
"What makes us most excited is people who stop us on the street and ask us for photos for their children," he adds.
@tongastyle
@ gioyeah1 I'm not a sailor, I'm an arbañil, I'm an arbañil 🌚😒 #parati #losyinyang #fyp #tiktok #love #comedy #fashion #follow #foryouoage
♬ original sound - Tongastyle
That "personality" of the networks is the famous algorithm. The algorithm is a very long series of instructions that decides in what order to teach videos to a user. Each network creates its changing list of criteria and the creators try to understand what they want at all times. The result depends on their almost random decisions and, therefore, more and more lives of creators who live or want to aspire to live from their creations. They can be the worst of bosses.
EL PAIS has spoken with a dozen artists, computer scientists or pranksters with hundreds of thousands of followers who are trying to profit from their activity on networks, especially TikTok, YouTube, Twitch and Instagram, with the more or less pressing idea of generating income. The road is more arduous than it seems from the outside. Above all, because success depends on that peculiar and opaque boss: the algorithm. "We are content creators, but we are becoming optimizers of the algorithm, we all dance to their rhythm without understanding how it works," says Carlos Santana, author of the YouTube channel DotCSV, on artificial intelligence and with more than 400,000 followers.
The academy has begun to study the phenomenon. Professor Brooke Erin Duffy, from Cornell University, wrote last year the scientific article “Algorithmic precariousness in cultural work”, referring to social networks: “Although there is a great level of precariousness endemic to all platforms, the TikTok's novelty, combined with its unique nature of its
algorithmically generated
For you
page
, means that it is seen as a particularly unstable place for creators, ”he explains to EL PAÍS.
Santana posted heavily on TikTok in Fall 2020 and reached 380,000 followers.
Now he's parked it to focus on Twitch.
His tests on different platforms have not given him much light: “I still don't understand why I was uploading a video on TikTok and it had 2 million views and another, 2,000.
And I want to understand it.
This is not about the fact that the audience is 200 times more interested in one than the other, this is about TikTok giving it visibility.
The effect of the algorithm on Tiktok is amazing, ”he adds.
@carlasbooks_
Not reading them would be a sin🤭 {ig: carlags25} #foryou #parati #fyp #book #booktok #booktoker #libroslibroslibros
♬ slowed fairytale.
- エ ピ ッ ク.
An example of this power is Carla García's channel, dedicated to reading, which with less than 10,000 users and some 2,000 views had a success of half a million views. She jumped to 12,000 followers, which already allows her to be chosen to collect some money from TikTok, although at first it barely reaches 10 euros. Although García says that "it's like a roulette wheel," like everyone else, he's pending success and hopes to repeat it. That power is certainly addictive, but its variability makes it delicate for the creators' health. In TikTok they admit that although the number of followers affects distribution, it is not a direct factor for the content to go viral.
The most notorious recent case in Spain has been that of Martí Montferrer, author of the CdeCiencia channel on YouTube, with 1.4 million followers. In January he announced that he was stopping posting videos, with a long video. Montferrer did not want to speak for this report, but in his video he makes clear his reasons: "I was afraid to upload videos to YouTube," he explained. Why? For his lack of understanding about the success of each piece. "Your instinct refuses to accept that it is something random over which you have no control because that implies accepting that your survival is in the hands of something abstract and unknown completely unpredictable with patterns that change every second," he says, adding that his health mental was at stake: "When I saw this I began to understand why my health was so bad, it is very fucked up and toxic and draining."
On YouTube they hide behind the fact that this is the algorithm and little else can be done: "As with all technology, our recommendation system has been changing substantially, and we make numerous updates every year", and they add the details that they have punished the
clickbait (
the hook holders
)
and increased the variation of recommendations.
DotCSV's Santana explains it better: “These networks are not perfect and can fail.
At an aggregate level, YouTube may serve to optimize the metric of retaining the user on the platform, but at an individual level, one channel is still loaded and another without specific criteria, ”he explains.
YouTube has millions of channels.
Lose one, two or three?
It matters little.
The opacity of the algorithm is also mandatory.
If they were known, the creators would play only to cheat and beat the system.
@carlosazaustre
Directory of public APIs for your #development projects #programming #frontend #programming #api #html css #javascript
♬ She Share Story (for Vlog) - 山口 夕 依
This unpredictable relationship is even more random with TikTok, where more videos are published and the viralization is like “playing roulette”, according to Carlos Azaustre, a programmer who has been uploading videos for a few months on TikTok, with uneven results. "Reaching 10,000 followers is easy, it took me a month and a half but I know people who have achieved it in three days"; He says. But like Santana and Montferrer, its origin is YouTube. “You upload a video and it tells you how it works in half an hour. Then it is updated. He is suggesting things you can do. Sometimes I have changed the title of the thumbnail and it has worked. But if you start paying attention to everything YouTube tells you, you go crazy, "he explains.
Brais Moure, also a developer and popularizer on YouTube, agrees: "Doing that would create stress for me that I can't afford today," he says. Moure also has his YouTube channel as the main sample of his work. But now he's testing live streams on Twitch every day. "The work compared to the pay is very low," he says. "But I earn the same on Twitch with 10,000 followers as on YouTube with 140,000," he explains. That also shows instability. Will that ratio be maintained? Who knows. At the moment his fortune is that he does not live on that income.
Each network has its demands, but they all have one goal: to keep the user inside. Creators often combine multiple networks to increase their footprint and protect themselves, but it often involves even more work. “The increase in complaints that I have seen is linked to the increasing level of work required to maintain a presence on various platforms, requiring different functions, algorithms and expectations of audience relationships,” says Professor Duffy.
Benja Serra, who became famous in 2013 for a tweet about how he cleaned toilets in London “with two degrees and a master's degree”, had 700 followers on Instagram.
"With photos there was no way to upload."
In a month and a half it jumped to 13,000.
What happened?
He started uploading the videos he made on TikTok, without his watermark, to Reels, the Instagram platform that mimics TikTok.
As Instagram wants more "reels" and Serra made them, because he taught his followers more.
Serra is lucky to have another full-time job and is on social media as a hobby.
@benjaserra
Reply to @jcarloss_ica You have caught me.
#comediaenespañol # humorespaña # tiktokespaña #visavis
♬ She Share Story (for Vlog) - 山口 夕 依
Low-expectation entertainment is the best way to network.
Although the hook of a small income is necessary to retain creators.
The competition between platforms to keep their talent will get tougher every day.
If someone's favorite creators are on Twitch, why go to YouTube?
It will not be strange to see more and more (there are already) platform wars for creators.
"When people say they pay on TikTok, I say watch out, they pay if you have many, many, millions of followers," says Fortu Sánchez, singer of the legendary Spanish heavy group Obús.
"With my 112,000 followers I start to monetize but it costs 100 euros a month," he adds.
@elfortuylamari
La Mari doesn't stop eating 😂 # fouryou #parati #tik_tok #humor
♬ original sound - Fortu, La Mari and Yoli
In the confinement, Fortu created an account with her mother, @elfortuylamari, with whom they make videos especially at lunchtime at her home in Roquetas de Mar (Almería), with funny dialogues full of tacos. One of his hits, with more than 2 million views, begins: "Hey, Mari, when are you going to stop eating?" And Mari responds seriously: "When I get out of the balls." In the absence of being able to do concerts, Fortu turned to humor: “I wanted to laugh. And society wanted it too. I started with this roll in food. I think they have to be spontaneous, ”he says. In addition to entering, he does not rule out using this springboard to promote his new solo album, which comes out on June 4.
But for spontaneous, Antonio Priego and Gregorio García.
They are a couple from L'Hospitalet, next to Barcelona and they upload many videos, with hardly any production.
They are very free and with a somewhat shocking humor: they have several “daughters” (dolls, actually) who are sometimes “born” live on TikTok.
This week Agata was to be born.
His 245,000 followers are delighted.
They have their theory about their success with the algorithm: the direct ones.
"We do live shows every day, when we have dinner, and we have 4,000, 6,000 people, much more than others with more followers," says Priego.
Both have their jobs in Barcelona and for now they do not plan to leave it.
No company has wanted to collaborate at the moment.
But they also ask for photos on the street for their children.
The phenomena of the TikTok algorithm are inscrutable.
@antonioygregorio ♬ Sleeping on the Blacktop - Colter Wall
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