“I DON’T know what to do with this platform,” laments a senior editor with The Business Times (BT), as some of us discuss TikTok. “The boomers are on it for silly entertainment. Gen X, like my husband, uses it to forage for food ideas. And my 14-year-old says all I have to do is get Uncle Raymond to visit the newsroom?!”

Uncle Raymond is a 60-year-old TikTok dance sensation; and with 2.4 million ‘likes’ on his videos to date, he’s giving news providers a run for their money in connecting with Singapore’s young audiences.

TikTok is relatively new, but has shaken up the media world. Driving its success is the use of short-form, vertical video; and an uncanny algorithm, that serves users content they don’t even know they want – based on their actual browsing behaviours, and not the creators they follow.