• Following the unveiling of ‘X,’ TikTok announced it’s rolling out support for text posts.
• The move can be seen as a way to take on not just Musk’s X and Meta’s Thread but also Instagram stories.

The same day Twitter was rebranded to ‘X,’ TikTok decided to beef up its offerings by introducing new ‘text posts.’ The move came nearly a year after TikTok Stories was launched as a pilot project to take on Instagram Stories. In short, when users access TikTok’s camera page, they can choose from photos, videos, and text.

The short-form video streaming giant owned by China’s ByteDance has dominated the social media industry since just before the pandemic. It gradually added more features to take on social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. By adding text posts, experts reckon TikTok is likely well positioned to take on Twitter, known as X now, and Meta’s Threads, as users look for a new place to post text-based content.

For context, Meta’s answer to X, Threads, has amassed a staggering 150 million users since its launch. On the other hand, TikTok is a more established platform with over 1.677 billion users globally, out of which 1.1 billion are its monthly active users as of 2023. “Today we’re thrilled to announce the expansion of text posts on TikTok, a new format for creating text-based content that broadens options for creators to share their ideas and express their creativity,” TikTok said in a blog posting.

With text posts, TikTok said it is expanding the boundaries of content creation for its users, giving the written creativity TikTok has seen in comments, captions, and videos “a dedicated space to shine.”

The way it works is that through access to the camera page, users can select text and be directed to the text creation page. The hyped-out posts can then be enhanced by adding sound, tagging a location, enabling comments, and allowing duets, among others, TikTok said.

Like Instagram Stories, those features make text posts just as dynamic and interactive as any video or photo post. TikTok cleverly jumped on the text-only bandwagon amidst an exodus of X users over the last few months due to Elon Musk’s erratic behavior and constant changes to the social media platform he owns. 

Most recently, users bid adieu to the term ‘Twitter’ and ‘tweets’ and its iconic blue bird logo. Therefore, TikTok is likely looking to provide an alternative option for users who want to post text-based content. 

Indeed, text posts on TikTok would look different than on Twitter or Threads, so people might not use text posts on TikTok like on other platforms. Moreover, Meta’s launch of a whole new social platform is more significant than the new feature, but TikTok continues providing its users with various features to share creatively.

When TikTok went viral in 2019, pulling in millions of global users nearly overnight, almost every major social media channel quickly pivoted attention to short-form videos. From Instagram – which notably innovated on Snapchat Stories – launching Instagram Reels, YouTube – known for its longer-form videos – eventually found YouTube Shorts.

All before TikTok decided to take on its biggest social media rivals by exploring two familiar features: TikTok Stories and 10-minute video capabilities. Amidst that, the ByteDance-owned platform also expanded its TikTok Shop throughout Southeast Asian countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Two years since its launch, the popularity of TikTok’s e-commerce business, TikTok Shop, has rapidly risen due to the short video app’s global meteoric growth. The speedy ascent of the ByteDance-owned shopping feature has even raised the question of whether Shopee and Lazada can stay ahead of the competition in Southeast Asia’s crowded e-commerce market.

Undoubtedly, the Bytedance-owned social media platform is up against stiff competition from established players like Shopee and Lazada. The upside, however, is that as the Southeast Asia e-commerce boom continues, social commerce will become increasingly ubiquitous, and TikTok is perfectly poised to explore this as a revenue stream.

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