JAKARTA - On a fairly long timeline, every social media application tends to add stories, and now it's TikTok's turn. This popular video app is experimenting with new story features. The feature was highlighted by Matt Navarra on Twitter, and a TikTok spokesperson confirmed the test.
The new feature, called "TikTok Stories," appears to work similarly to other stories functionality in apps like Instagram or Snapchat. Stories live in the newly added sliding sidebar, where you can see stories posted by accounts you follow on TikTok for 24 hours before they are automatically deleted. Other users can also react and comment on your story. As on Instagram and other platforms, you can also tap on a user's profile picture to load a story.
TikTok describes the features in the app as "a new way to interact with your fans." Users can create a new story by tapping the "create" button which has been added to the sidebar, and they can add text, music and plain text. In keeping with TikTok's video-first nature, it seems that stories should be videos, not still images.
Introducing TikTok Stories Plot twist!h/t @amanfirdaus pic.twitter.com/gvQMzixYtS
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) August 4, 2021
"We're always thinking of new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience," a TikTok spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Verge. “We are currently experimenting with how to give content creators additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community.”
The company did not provide details on how extensive the testing of TikTok Stories will be, or when it will be released. However, a quick search on Twitter reveals a number of TikTok users who have gained access to the feature.
The fact that TikTok will experiment with stories is not surprising. Stories have become the only true constant on social media, with platforms from Instagram to Facebook to Linkedin to Pinterest to Netflix to YouTube to the Xbox app replicating Snapchat's original features from 2013.
When they work, stories are a great way to get users to interact with each other on the app, offer new places for ads, and generally keep feedback from social media apps going.
Stories don't always work, though: just ask Twitter, which was forced to shut down its own stories clone, the creatively-named Fleets, earlier this week, just eight months after launching, due to user apathy towards the feature.
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