“TikTok Notes” Is Instagram’s Newest Competition
If Instagram stole TikTok’s trick when releasing Reels, it looks like TikTok is ready to return the favor. The company is working on a new app called TikTok Notes, which is very similar to the popular photo-sharing platform Meta.
The company initially teased the idea earlier this month , sending users notifications with the title “Your photo posts will show up in TikTok Notes.” The alert explains that TikTok Notes is a new photo sharing app, so future public TikTok photo posts will appear in the company’s new dedicated app. It gave users the option to opt out of TikTok Notes if they preferred to save their photo posts within TikTok itself.
On Wednesday, the company posted an official announcement on X (formerly Twitter) about TikTok Notes as a photo and text sharing app. TikTok is currently only initially testing TikTok Notes in Australia and Canada, so those of us outside of those countries can’t try it out yet, but this post gives us some insight into how the app will work.
Judging by the four screenshots provided, TikTok Notes will have a For You page, just like TikTok, but perhaps more in line with Instagram’s Explore page. This For You page shows multiple photo posts from users across the platform at once, but if you prefer, it seems you can go to the Follows tab to see posts from only the people you specifically follow.
The posts themselves, as you might expect, are a cross between a TikTok post and an Instagram post. You can upload multiple photos at once and attach a caption. Below you will find comments, as well as a place to leave your thoughts. From here there are the usual “Like”, “Save” and “Comment” buttons, showing how many likes, saves and comments users have left.
Who’s going to use it?
Will this stick? Honestly, I do not know. Sure, TikTok is hugely popular, but Instagram has very few competitors in the photo sharing space. While TikTok has a loyal following, I don’t know if they will feel compelled to switch to the new app, especially if they also have a strong presence on Instagram for photo sharing.
However, what I’m most interested in is whether they’ll launch the app in the US. Right now the test is extremely limited, but once the app starts rolling out to more countries, will it worry about the one that is actively trying to ban its products first ? However, the US is the birthplace of Meta, so TikTok (and ByteDance) may be worth getting into the fight, however short-lived it may be.