It all started with Snapchat. People could upload photos and videos to their stories, knowing within 24 hours, they would disappear. Instagram caught on to this really popular feature and decided to adopt it as their own. Now, it’s TikTok’s turn. All social media apps battle each other to become the most popular or to have the best features available. When in reality, they’re all mirroring each other.
There are some photos or videos that you want to post, but, you don’t want them to stay forever. This is why stories have always been favoured. Many people post a story daily to one platform or another. It’s a great way of showing your followers what you’re up to without bombarding their feed. Also, it means you don’t have to spend as much time perfecting the post, as it’s only going to be visible for 24 hours.
It started as a feature on Snapchat when that was widely popular. Then Instagram took it onboard, later followed by Facebook. Even Twitter trialled it for a while, but it seems it wasn’t too popular on the platform, and they soon removed it. How will it work for TikTok? I’d imagine it will be quite popular. It will give users the chance to come on and say hi without having to spend a lot of time editing their video to make it perfect.
Surely it’s the perfect way for artists and influencers to show their fans their daily lives? It would create more chance for content because it allows flexibility from your typical posting schedules. They’ll also seem a little more authentic, the real you. Removing the post-production layers and having something raw and organic shows your fans you’re human.
On the other hand, TikTok videos are already kept reasonably short. Is there a need for this extra feature? Will it flop like Twitter’s version did? It seems that this feature is only being rolled out to certain accounts to test at the moment. It will be interesting to see how it takes off when they release it to everyone.
It’s all about staying in the game. Social media platforms seem to need to compete with each other, even when they all offer slightly different things. Once one of them have a feature that proves popular, the others seem to jump on board and suddenly have the exact same thought. Strange how these coincidences work…
