For the past year or so, Meta Platforms has been fiddling with its Instagram app to make it look more like TikTok, the short-video juggernaut that has been siphoning away its audience. Lately, though, TikTok has started borrowing a few social media tricks from the likes of Meta’s Instagram and upstart photo-sharing app BeReal.
One of the changes is the Friends tab, a feature the TikTok app introduced in May, which allows people to see videos from people they’re connected to. Another is TikTok Now, a BeReal-like feature that came out in September that encourages users to post a single photo or video every day at a specific time in exchange for viewing similar posts by friends. TikTok has also recently started interrupting the flow of videos in the most commonly used part of the app—the For You page—by badgering users to follow accounts that recently followed them, and it regularly asks users for access to their phone contacts in an attempt to get people to connect with their friends.
Collectively, these and other recent tweaks TikTok has made to its app represent a stepping up of its efforts to promote social connections between its users. Those features could help the company keep its audience more engaged with the app at a time when TikTok’s gangbusters growth has cooled. But their addition could also lessen TikTok’s distinctiveness from other apps over time, a topic employees have debated internally.
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