- TikTok is making a push into social media messaging. Mostly ignoring messaging until now, TikTok is reportedly fearful that users are leaving the platform when discussing its content.
Similar to X’s expansion into other fields, TikTok no longer wants to rest on its laurels. Competing platforms are after all also innovating. Axios first broke the story:
TikTok has posted a slew of new jobs in the past week for roles that include building more social networking and private messaging features.
Why it matters: Inside TikTok, there’s concern that users are sharing TikTok videos externally on other social media and messaging apps when they want to discuss them with friends, sources told Axios.
TikTok’s move might make sense from a business perspective. However, it’s privacy issues are a core concern of the platform to the American public. The Verge continues:
If there is a specific overarching product plan, TikTok’s listings don’t reveal it. (Neither will the company: it told Axios only that entertainment is still the core of TikTok.) But the listing for a backend software engineer says that the Social team oversees “User Profile, Story, Inbox, Messaging, Follow, Like, Comment, Tag, etc.” Add all that together, and you have … a messaging app! An extremely Instagram-sounding messaging app, at that.
Ultimately, it appears that while the rest of the industry chases TikTok’s vertical video, creation tools, and seemingly magical algorithmic feed, TikTok is going to try and build the rest of what makes those other apps work. How far it will go will be fascinating to watch: Will TikTok try and displace Snapchat as the go-to messaging app for young people? Will it try and become the place people post expiring stories? Will it lean into WhatsApp-style group chats and communities or focus more on one-to-one chats? Where will ByteDance fall on the encrypted messaging debate?
Privacy remains TikTok’s largest problem. While its content and format is innovative, social media’s addiction problems are similar across platforms. This move into messaging could pressage an American WeChat controlled by China, a much greater national security threat.
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