Now You Can “repost” on TikTok (Probably)
TikTok is getting a new feature that looks a bit like the one we’re all familiar with. The “retweet” feature has been a Twitter staple ever since the button was added in 2009. TikTok is currently beta testing a new “repost” feature that many refer to as app retweet.
This feature is not yet available to all of TikTok’s 1 billion active users ; To see if you’re a member of the beta community, click the Share button on a TikTok video from the For You feed and a new repost button will appear.
How does TikTok “retweet” work?
TikTok’s repost feature allows users to share videos with common followers with the click of a single button. The new yellow repost button can be found in the share menu for certain videos next to your friends’ icons. You can add a comment to a re-posted video, but it will not be posted as your content. The original creator will still get the likes or comments that the re-posted video gets. In this way, a repost is similar to a retweet on Twitter.
However, only certain videos can be reposted. The repost feature is currently only available for videos that appear on the For You page . Videos from the Subscriptions feed, search results, or Inbox cannot be reposted.
Unlike duets and stitching, video reposting doesn’t require you to create your own additional content. This is part of TikTok’s motivation for adding this feature. People who use TikTok more casually or prefer not to post content themselves will love its convenience.
Who can see the video repost?
Visibility is where TikTok reposts are most different from Twitter retweets. Unlike a retweet, a repost does not appear on your profile. In fact, it won’t even be visible to all of your followers. Only general followers can see republished videos, i.e. people you follow who also follow you. For most of us, it’s friends and family.
This makes reposting an easy way to share a video with multiple TikTok friends without having to send it to each of them individually. This is probably what TikTok intends to use the feature for, not promotion.
What does the repost button mean for creators?
TikTok retweet lookalike can be a great feature for creators. However, TikTok seems to have thought ahead to prevent abuse of the new repost feature. This is clearly reflected in the design.
If the creator is trying to promote their own video, reposting it over and over won’t do much good as it will just spread to their mutual followers. The same anti-abuse design also prevents the bloated mutual reposting often seen in “follow to follow” requests on social media.
However, the repost helps the creators. This makes it easy for other users to share and promote creators’ content. The real value of a creator lies in their audience’s ability to distribute their videos with the click of a button.
Since retweeting TikTok is much easier than sending videos to individual friends, content creators can increase their reach with reposts. Expanding video sharing can also help creators build valuable brand reputation as their content can easily reach far beyond their own followers. The rise of creators could potentially even be accelerated by the retweet version of TikTok.
While TikTok doesn’t reveal details about how their algorithm works , reposts are likely to be a helpful factor. Videos that are posted more often can be recommended to more new users through an algorithm, especially since they originally come from the For You pages. However, it remains to be seen how much reposting affects video popularity with the TikTok algorithm.