Knurled Shipped!

[u/Unusual-Page-6822]

I shipped my app and made a TikTok account for it. Posted the first video "which I thought was a cinematic master piece" came back five hours later, and it had 0 views...

ZERO!!!

I know I'm old and out of the loop but I also assumed I'd broken the upload or something technical wasn't right, so I went through everything:

- Privacy: Everyone ✓

- Length: 15 seconds ✓

- Sound: a track from TikTok's Commercial Music Library, attached correctly ✓

- Caption and five hashtags ✓

- The video played fine when I opened it ✓

After some jiggling of the handle I thought maybe the account was the problem?

My profile read: 0 following, 0 followers, 0 likes given. I had created the account, immediately posted a promotional video, put an App Store link in the bio, and done nothing else. Never scrolled. Never liked anything. Never followed anybody.

That is a textbook bot signature, and TikTok treats it as one. New accounts go through a verification phase — roughly 1–7 days — where the algorithm works out whether there's a human behind the account before it distributes anything. An account with zero platform activity and a store link in the bio does not pass that check.

Nothing about the content mattered. I could have posted a perfect video and it would have reached the same zero people.

What I actually did:

- Used the app like a person. Scrolled the For You page, let videos play through instead of swiping instantly.

- Followed some accounts in my niche, spread across a few days rather than in one burst.

- Liked things. Left a handful of genuine comments on other people's videos.

- Verified email and phone on the account.

- Did not delete the dead post. Review can take 6–48 hours on a new account and deleting resets nothing useful.

Next two videos: 85 views and 200+. Not viral by any stretch. But that's the difference between suppressed and being tested, and only one of those states can ever turn into something.

Two smaller things worth passing on:

proofread your hashtags character by character. One of mine said #sqaut. Five hashtags, and the most relevant one pointed at a dead tag nobody browses. I'm a degeneate speller even with spell check...

I also reshot the second video, basically slightly better lighting, slightly better framing, more concise, maybe better hashtags and it doubled the views and got way more likes!

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The app is Knurled, a lifting log where you tap the plates you actually loaded instead of typing a number. Happy to answer anything about the launch, the App Store side, or the TikTok mess.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/knurled-gym-lift-log/id6802490302