I Built TikTok for People Who Love to Read

I've been trying to solve a personal problem for a long time. It all started in college. As someone who loved reading, I was constantly coming across words I didn't know. I tried different ways to keep track of them. I highlighted them in books, which broke my reading flow. I kept a separate notebook, but it became a long, disorganized list that I never looked at. I even used Google Docs and Google Keep, but those were just digital lists with no real learning features.

The process was always the same. I'd find a word, pause what I was doing, look it up, and then forget it a week later. I was stuck in a Dictionary Loop. I realized the problem was that my method was too passive.

This led me to build the first version of my solution, a simple web app I called LinguaTracka. The idea was to have a central place to store my words. I built it with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I connected it to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary API to pull in definitions and used my browser's localStorage to save my list. I even added a feature to import my old lists from Google Docs. A friend I showed it to gave me some good feedback, and I eventually built a more decent version with better tracking and a dark mode.

But after a while, I realized I still wasn't solving the core problem. While the app was a good tracker, it wasn't helping me learn. The process was still too passive. To really make the words stick, I needed to interact with them in a more active and engaging way.

This realization led to a complete rethinking of the project. The goal wasn't just to track words anymore. The goal was to make learning feel like play. This is when LinguaTracka evolved into a new idea: WordTok.

The name itself was the first big change. I wanted something that captured this new philosophy. I settled on WordTok because it's built on the idea that you learn language by taking an action.

The next step was to figure out what those actions would be. I really admire how the New York Times Games make thinking about words fun. So I decided to borrow that idea. The app would become a suite of games generated from my personal word list.

My first thought was to just copy Wordle with a game called WordGuess. But I quickly ran into a design problem. Most of the interesting words I wanted to learn aren't five letters long. A 5-letter-only game would be useless for most of my list. To solve this, I designed a new core game called Reveal, a Hangman-style game for words of any length. This makes sure the app is always useful. WordGuess would remain, but as a special challenge that only appears on the Games page if a user has 5-letter words in their lexicon (word list).

Then I wanted to make the app more social and engaging, inspired by TikTok. My first idea for a Daily Dispatch home screen was to give every user a daily challenge based on a word from their personal list. But this had a logical flaw. If everyone's list is different, you can't have a social feed where people compare answers to the same prompt.

The solution was to make the Home screen a two-part experience. The first part is your Personal Practice, a private challenge with a word from your own list to help you maintain your daily streak and earn XP. Below that is the Word of the Day, a global challenge where WordTok picks one word for all users to practice together. This is where the social feed works perfectly.

But this created another problem. What if a user doesn't know the global Word of the Day? They would feel left out. To solve this, I designed a Choose Your Path challenge. When you see the word, you have two options. You can click "I know it!" and write a sentence for a big XP bonus. Or, you can click "Hmm, what does it mean?" to see the definition first, and still get rewarded for participating. This removes the pressure and makes the game inclusive.

The biggest evolution came when I realized we could create a powerful incentive loop with partner content. The Word of the Day now features words from partner publications like The New York Times, Scientific American, and The Atlantic. When users read the full article and answer a bonus comprehension question, they earn 50 XP and unlock a quiz hint. This hint then gives them a competitive advantage in the weekly quiz. It's a win-win: users get better at vocabulary, and publishers get engaged readers.

To make the app even more competitive, I wanted a Leaderboard. But it had to be fair. A creative challenge like the daily sentence wouldn't work. The solution is the Weekly Quiz. It's a standardized, multiple-choice test that is the same for all users. The quiz questions themselves are based on the seven "Word of the Day" words from that week. This creates a perfect loop that rewards daily engagement.

Just recently, I had another aha! moment while reading about the New York Times' Summer Reading Contest. They ask students to submit written or video responses about what they read. This made me realize that my Weekly Quiz only appeals to competitive users. It was missing a space for creative expression. This led to a new idea. We will still have the Weekly Quiz. But we will also have a Weekly Reflection challenge. Users can submit a short written response about a featured partner article. But more importantly, we will have a Creator Spotlight for 90-second video submissions. This will be our high-status weekly event. The winner's video will be featured on the app's home screen and promoted across all of WordTok's social media channels, with the creator tagged. This gives our most creative users a real incentive to participate by offering them a platform and exposure.

The app now includes adaptive learning with spaced repetition algorithms that track your mastery level for each word. Words you struggle with appear more frequently, while mastered words are reviewed less often. The Lexicon page shows your progress with color-coded mastery levels and review schedules.

Games have expanded to include Cognate (finding word relationships), Letter Hive (word building), and Daily Cypher (cryptic word puzzles). Each game adapts to your personal word list and difficulty level.

The most important part of growth is letting users share their accomplishments. The app will have a built-in social sharing feature. After completing a quiz or a game, users will get a simple, clean graphic of their results that they can easily share to their social media. This taps into the desire for friendly competition that made Wordle go viral.

WordTok isn't just for individual readers. It's for Students and Teachers, who can gamify studying with a shared Group Lexicon for their class. It's for Book Clubs, who can build a vocabulary list for the book they're reading. And it's for Academics and Professionals, who can use a group lexicon to master the dense jargon in research papers.

This leads to the bigger mission. With AI summarization hurting publishers, WordTok can be part of the solution. My plan is to partner with creators. We can feature a word from their article or book as our Word of the Day, and incentivize our users to read the original piece by making a question about it part of the Weekly Quiz. This drives engaged readers back to the writers who deserve the audience.

On the technical side, WordTok has evolved from basic HTML/CSS to a modern React/TypeScript application with sophisticated state management, adaptive algorithms, and a responsive design system. The architecture supports real-time updates (but some features are currently placeholders and use my word list data), offline functionality (Not yet available), and seamless integration with partner content APIs (partner content is currently mocked, not fetched live).

Finally, the pricing model is designed like a "TikTok Hook." A user should never hit a paywall before they experience the magic. The Free Tier is generous. Users can save up to 20 words and play all the game modes. The prompt to upgrade to Premium for $5 a month only appears when they try to add their 21st word (UI logic is present, but payment and access control are not fully wired up). By that point, they are already hooked, and paying to continue a valuable habit becomes an easy decision.