In the early days of Musical.ly, leadership had frequent debates about whether to base the app on social relationships or on an “interest graph,” making it entertainment-focused, said Alex Hofmann, former North America president of Musical.ly, in an interview.

Hofmann, who left Musical.ly a few months after ByteDance acquired the company in late 2017 (and merged it into another app you’ve probably heard of: TikTok), said that while products with “a social graph” usually retain users better because they want to check out what friends are doing, ultimately the company went the entertainment route.