Almost every major social media app now has one thing in common; Stories. It is TikTok’s turn to experiment with the story feature on its platform. Matt Navarra confirmed the new feature on Twitter.
‘TikTok Stories’ appears to work similarly to that on other platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, where users will be able to see content posted by accounts they follow for 24 hours before it gets deleted.
This comes just after messaging app Whatsapp rolled out a feature for users to post photos or videos that vanish once they are opened. Whatsapp has named it a ‘View Once’ feature.
The new TikTok feature lives in a newly-added slide-over sidebar, where you will get to see the disappearing stories. Users will be able to react and comment on your story, too, and you will also be able to tap on the user’s profile picture to load a story.
TikTok, which ByteDance owns, told the BBC,
“We’re always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience. Currently we’re experimenting with ways to give creators additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community.”
TikTok describes this feature as a new way to interact with your fans. Users can create stories and add the usual captions, music, and text. Considering TikTok’s video-first nature, it seems you can add videos to the stories and not still images.
However, the company did not provide any further details on how extensively it is testing TikTok stories, or when we can witness its wider release. For now, this feature has been rolled out for selected users.
Stories have been constants in all major social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Netflix, and Youtube. It is not surprising that Tiktok decided to experiment with the feature. The Story Feature was initially rolled out on Snapchat back in 2013.
However, Twitter is the latest example of why Stories aren’t always successful since the platform was forced to shut down its feature called Fleets just eight months after its launch.