TikTok is going to compete with Instagram by releasing a photo-sharing app. The business said it was making a “dedicated space” for writing and pictures. Some users have been notified that their picture posts will be sent to a new app called “TikTok Notes” unless they choose not to share them there. Social media companies are copying each other’s goods all the time. For example, Instagram will release Reels in 2020, a video tool similar to TikTok.
“The copycat phenomenon is widespread across all social media platforms,” told the BBC Mike Proulx, research director at the research company Forrester. For example, he said that similar features “pay off” when they are done right. He used Instagram’s “Stories” feature as an example.
But he pointed out that Twitter had tried something similar before and failed, so there was no promise that this would work. Some Instagram users have been annoyed by the company’s efforts to make Reels a bigger part of the app. Some people, like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, shared a plea in 2022 that said the platform should not make changes that seemed to favor Reels over other parts of the app.
Instagram took back the changes after people didn’t like them. “A lot of them” Notes app design is still being worked on by TikTok, and the company hasn’t set a release date yet. But some users have gotten notifications that the app will soon let them upload or share photo posts. This is similar to how the TikTok app lets users post a number of pictures with sounds and filters. Screenshots of the message showed a switch that TikTok users could use to stop their photo posts from being shared on the app.
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, said that a text or picture app might be a better place for most TikTok users who “lurk” instead of posting to interact with others. He did say, though, that he didn’t believe social media users were “desperate” for another app to share photos.
“We have a lot of them, so I don’t think there’s a need for that many,” he said. It comes at a bad time for the company because the US just passed a law that could ban TikTok if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell it within six months of the law’s passage.
Jasmine Enberg, principal social media analyst at Insider Intelligence, said, “Launching Notes as a separate app would be a change of strategy for TikTok, which has traditionally added new features directly to the core app. However, it makes sense given the current regulatory and consumer scrutiny.”
“There are few places left where it doesn’t have a stronghold, and photo-sharing is one,” she said. Mike Proulx said that TikTok might do well to follow Meta’s lead and rely on the large number of Instagram users that already use Threads, Meta’s competitor to Twitter.
“But like Threads, the key will be creating a compelling enough experience to get them to stick around TikTok Notes beyond the initial curiosity factor,” he said. “What makes one social media platform different from another gets smaller as features start to become common on all of them.” It comes down to algorithms, the group, and how the users feel about the site.