TikTok has announced that it will offer text-only posts, becoming the latest technology company to seek to capitalize on people who may be looking for an alternative to Twitter.
TikTok video sharing platform Announced on Monday that it will now allow users to create “text-based content,” in a move marked as “expanding the boundaries of content creation for everyone on TikTok” and “giving the written creativity we’ve seen in comments, annotations, and videos their dedicated space to shine.”
Users will also be able to add colorful backgrounds and stickers to posts, which have a limit of no more than 1,000 words. Variety compared the feature to Instagram, where instead of facilitating conversation, posts can simply be commented on.
TechCrunch stated that introducing the feature “is likely to take Twitter (now X) and Meta Threads.” In his latest shakeup since buying Twitter in October, Elon Musk renamed the company X this week, in a move commentators called “extremely risky.”
Twitter is struggling financially, announcing in July that its advertising revenue had fallen by 50% as advertisers withheld spending on the site. Rival tech companies have used the perceived chaos and disruption caused by Musk’s purchase of Twitter as an opportunity to attract some of their user base and launch rival platforms.
Threads is Instagram’s text-based app, which taps into the existing Instagram user base and was launched earlier this month. While Themes saw 100 million people sign up in less than five days after its launch, it has recorded the number of daily active users. Since then it has fallen by 70%, according to Forbes reports.
According to the company’s website, TikTok has just over 1 billion users, while Instagram has 2.3 billion users, according to the industry site, business applications.
TikTok’s audience is smaller than Instagram’s, as the UK’s communications watchdog found this week The #1 source for news for 12-15 year oldsfollowed by YouTube and Instagram.
However, TikTok has faced criticism over its links to China, with the Canadian, US, UK and Australian governments restricting the app to government-owned devices. The company revealed this week that its employees based in China have access to some Australian user data.
“Lifelong beer expert. General travel enthusiast. Social media buff. Zombie maven. Communicator.”