No One’s Watching My TikTok After The First Hour. Why?

It’s a great feeling to watch views rolling in after you’ve posted a new TikTok video.
But it’s an awful feeling to see your view count freeze after an hour or so, and never move again.

It unquestionably sucks to see your TikTok post’s popularity hit a brick wall, but you’re far from alone. It’s quite common to see TikTok views start to rise, only to see all engagement with your videos fall off the map a short time later.

What’s going on?

You can blame the TikTok algorithms.

Why Does My TikTok Stop Getting Views After an Hour?

The system’s algorithms handle lots of crucial tasks on the app, but two of their most important functions stand out.

1. They track TikTok users’ viewing and behavior on the social media platform, and then use that information to display posts that the users would probably be interested in seeing.
2. They determine which videos should receive widespread exposure to random surfers — and which don’t deserve a large audience.

For this discussion, we’re concerned with the second job that the algorithms perform.

TikTok influencers and popular content creators are in good shape when it comes to visibility on the platform. The algos base their decisions primarily on a video’s popularity and the number of fans following the creator’s account. Posts with lots of views and accounts with lots of TikTok followers receive the bulk of available visibility, including spots on the For You Page (FYP).

Everyone else isn’t completely shut out, though. The algorithms give all videos a chance to prove they deserve lots of exposure on the app — and as you might have guessed, that chance lasts approximately one hour.

Here’s what happens. When you upload TikTok content, a small random audience is shown the video and their reactions are judged. The algorithms consider how many likes, shares, and comments the post receives, and check important engagement metrics like total watch time (measured in watch hours) and completion rate (how many people viewed the entire video).

That test phase lasts for about 60 minutes. If the video performed well, it’s given the green light and is rewarded with a much larger audience, possibly even earning a spot on the FYP. However, a poorly-testing video essentially receives no more random exposure. In most cases, only the creator’s followers will see the post after that.

In other words, views stop rolling in for content that flunks the algorithms’ test; that’s why it often seems that people “stop watching” after the first hour. In reality, they’re no longer being given the opportunity to watch, and that’s reflected in a view count that simply stops increasing.

Many users call this phenomenon being put into “200 View Jail,” because videos usually accumulate between 150 and 250 views during the test phase, and virtually none after that.

As we said earlier, it sucks — but just think of a frozen view count as a signal that you need to produce better, more compelling content when you are ready to create your next video.