Highlights
- TikTok is expanding text posts to compete with Twitter, aiming to attract Twitter's vulnerable audience.
- TikTok's customizable text posts, with features like sound and tags, resemble Instagram's Stories but are more upfront.
- TikTok's additional functionality, including text post drafts, aims to make the platform appealing to different types of users, potentially replacing other text post-focused social media platforms.
TikTok is joining the race to be the social media website that overtakes Twitter in text posts. The video platform has officially announced that it will be expanding text posts beyond just comments and captions. Text posts on TikTok will have a variety of familiar customization options that will help make them distinct from Twitter and other platforms. But ultimately, TikTok's expansion into text posts seems very clearly intended to take a cut of Twitter's audience while it's at its most vulnerable.
Twitter has been having a tumultuous year, to say the least. The once-dominant social media platform has lost significant portions of its audience since Elon Musk purchased the company. This is due in large part to some troubling decisions from Musk, including allowing hate speech on the platform and prioritizing posts from subscribers. The release of competitive text-post services like Mastodon, BlueSky, and most recently Threads have cut into Twitter's market significantly, as well.
Twitter's losses have been other platforms' gain, and TikTok now wants a part of that audience, too. TikTok users now have the option to make a text post. Where users previously had the option to share either a photo or a video, a third option for text posts will now be available. There's nothing complex or surprising about the feature. TikTok users will simply write the text they want to share, and it will be published similarly to how their videos and photos worked.
TikTok does allow its users to add some flair to their text posts that platforms like Twitter don't offer. Users can add customizations to their posts, including sound, a tagged location, background colors, stickers, and tags and hashtags. Users can even enable TikTok Duets for their text posts, which could lead to some interesting results. In this regard, TikTok's text posts are perhaps more like Instagram's Stories, but more upfront.
Another useful feature that TikTok will offer by default is the ability to create text post drafts. Much like with photos and videos, TikTok users can create a text post draft and save it as unpublished. Then users can return to edit their drafts and potentially publish the post later.
Given the different structure of TikTok, the platform isn't necessarily trying to become the next Twitter. Users that want a feed of quick, digestible posts won't be seeking TikTok as their new home. Rather, it's simply offering additional functionality to make TikTok more attractive to different types of users. Those leaving Twitter may decide now that they don't need Threads, BlueSky, or another text post-focused social media platform. TikTok will cover all of their bases.