At present, TikTok has introduced a brand new characteristic known as ‘TikTok Now’, which can immediate customers to share a selfie, utilizing the back and front digicam, at a random time every day.

As defined by TikTok:

“Making potential deeper connection and leisure in a enjoyable format, TikTok Now invitations you and your mates to seize what you are doing within the second utilizing your system’s back and front digicam. You may obtain a each day immediate to seize a 10-second video or a static picture to simply share what you are as much as.”

Sound acquainted?

The characteristic is principally a direct rip-off of BeReal, whose fast progress and rising recognition has already seen its key parts replicated by Instagram and Snapchat as properly.

And now, TikTok’s getting in on the identical, with the characteristic being given a brand new tab within the app, and even a brand new, separate app in some areas exterior the US.

Each these approaches are very totally different, and it’ll be fascinating to see whether or not TikTok Now catches on in both type. That is significantly related within the case of TikTok, as a result of in contrast to different social networks, TikTok has framed itself as ‘an leisure app’, because of its concentrate on highlighting the very best content material from throughout the platform, versus customers curating their expertise by way of their very own buddy and curiosity segments.

Now, plainly TikTok’s leaning the opposite method, and inspiring extra direct buddy interplay. Which has all the time been part of the app, however it’s fascinating to notice compared to Meta, which is now attempting to develop individuals’s feed expertise past their established social graph.

So, will it work? Will TikTok customers get pleasure from having BeReal within the app that they’re already utilizing?

That’s actually the important thing lure – whereas social platforms are repeatedly copying and stealing parts from one another, the principle goal right here is the dilution of differentiation, giving individuals much less purpose to go and obtain an entire different app.

You most likely know individuals who refuse to obtain TikTok, however scroll by way of Instagram Reels frequently. That’s the viewers and conduct that this strategy is aimed toward, preserving customers of their apps for longer – versus, say, killing off a competitor straight.

TikTok, Instagram and Snap may solely maintain a tiny fraction of their viewers from downloading BeReal by replicating its core parts, however that might find yourself which means that a couple of million customers now received’t drift off to a different app to attach with their mates.

So it doesn’t have to be nearly as good, and the platforms don’t care that folks may scoff at their blatant duplication. As a result of it does work, it does maintain some customers from downloading different apps.

And in some instances, like Instagram Tales, the replicators can really develop into the market leaders with such options. So whether or not you prefer it or not, it’s a technique that they’ll maintain utilizing within the battle to keep up relevance and viewers.

However once more, the larger query on this occasion is whether or not TikTok is seeking to incorporate extra friend-focused options within the app. It has appeared that TikTok has been profitable by taking the alternative strategy, which provides it a a lot wider pool of content material to tug from when displaying customers the attest clips of their ‘For You’ feed.

Possibly now, TikTok is seeking to beef up its aggressive providing, in additional methods, because it appears to be like to the subsequent stage of social platform dominance.