TikTok’s attempting out one more app because it seeks to broaden engagement alternatives, and faucet into broader utilization tendencies.

TikTok’s newest app experiment is one thing known as Whee, which is an Instagram-like feed of photos, designed to solely be shared with associates.

As defined by TikTok:

“Whee is a brand new social app created to maintain you related together with your shut associates by means of life’s spontaneous moments. Seize and share real-life pictures that solely your folks can see, permitting you to be your most genuine self. Whee is the very best place for shut associates to share life moments.”

However grasp on, didn’t TikTok already launch a nonetheless picture based mostly app?

Sure, sure it did.

Again in April, TikTok launched a separate app known as Notes, which can be a photograph sharing app.

That app additionally appears like Instagram, although it appears much more like TikTok’s different separate app Lemon8 which it launched final yr.

Lemon8 is extra particularly centered on merchandise and promotions, so the use case isn’t the identical as Whee and Notes.

So what makes Whee and Notes completely different, and why is TikTok so hell-bent on facilitating picture sharing, alongside its most important short-form video app?

Effectively, by way of distinction, Whee appears to be centered on good friend sharing solely, whereas Notes is a extra broad viewers sort app.

Notes is described on the App Retailer as:

“TikTok Notes is a life-style platform that gives informative photo-text content material about individuals’s lives, the place you’ll be able to see people sharing their journey suggestions, each day recipes, and extra.”

So it’s extra of an IG-like public sharing platform for visible content material, versus enclosed sharing.

With reference to why photos, that seemingly pertains to Chinese language market tendencies.

Tencent-backed Xiaohongshu, one other Instagram clone, has seen a giant rise within the Chinese language market of late, which has additionally expanded into eCommerce alternatives.

Seemingly, TikTok’s hoping to copy the identical with Notes in Western markets, whereas Whee would lean into extra personal sharing, and possibly present customers with extra methods to share photos of merchandise, providing additional analysis perception for TikTok advert concentrating on?

I don’t know, however eCommerce is TikTok’s most important focus, and it looks like it must be tied again to that by some means.

Both method, it does seem to be an odd launch, particularly contemplating that individuals already conduct most of this kind of exercise on Instagram or Snapchat.

However TikTok’s attempting it out anyway, and it’ll be attention-grabbing to see if/how they appear to entice customers throughout to the brand new visible app.