100% this. Everyone else is trying to make a tiktok clone and bolt it on to a maze of existing, and in some cases very similar, social media offerings. TikTok works because it's video only from the ground up.
they both had implementation differences and primarily execution differences that had little to do with their platform, and more so finances
its not just video, its video+algorithm, its video+algorithm+content-subsidies
a lot of popular content creators on TikTok are still from the vine days, getting paid a lot more directly by the platforms now, as well as from whatever they can monetize on and off the platform.
Bytedance (TikTok) is willing to throw a lot of money at this, and they've been extremely high on compensation for engineers for years before TikTok reached critical mass.
