Twitter plans to introduce TikTok features
Twitter plans to introduce TikTok-like features, including short full-screen videos in the endless scrolling feed. In an announcement via its blog, the company said it is introducing an “immersive” video playback experience to the platform, along with a well-known swipe-up feature for more engaging content. The video carousel will be added to the Discover tab to allow users to participate in popular videos that are trending on the platform.
The “immersive multimedia viewer” will be launched on iOS in the next few days. Updates will be available for the English version of the app. Popular social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube tried to feature their versions of TikTok videos on their platform, but they weren’t as popular as the original TikTok app. Twitter seems to be jumping on the bandwagon to separate these short videos from tweeted videos into a full video carousel.
Twitter began testing a TikTok-like video feed in December 2021 to give users a more personalized Explore page. In this test, Twitter turned the entire Explore page into a video feed, complete with a “For You” tab. With the changes announced today, Twitter isn’t focusing on replacing the entire Explore page with a TikTok-like feed.
The company’s approach to a TikTok-style feed can be considered somewhat acceptable, especially considering it doesn’t directly force users, as the previous TikTok-style video feed test did. People who like scrollable video feeds can access the immersive viewer if they want, and users who don’t want a video feed can choose not to open the immersive viewer.
Twitter plans to introduce TikTok features
But of course, not everyone likes the change, especially when it comes to introducing a copy function from another platform.Instagram learned this the hard way, as a few months ago it was essentially forced to switch back to its full-screen TikTok-style home feed due to massive user backlash. Twitter may want to avoid such a situation, which is why it chooses to add a more manageable experience when it comes to scrollable video feeds.
