TikTok will now lets users share carousel posts of images. Is it trying to copy Instagram?

TikTok, yesterday, announced a suite of new features as it ‘hopes’ to give content creators “express themselves and more deeply connect with others.”

In a Thursday press release, the company announced “Photo Mode,” a new feature that allows users to share multiple still photos in a post. This lets you share carousel posts of images that automatically display one after another.

Users will be able add music to the images, which viewers can swipe through at their own pace. “The new feature is designed to give users a way to share high-quality images on the app,” the Social media giant says.

The new update also allows users to post content which can be paired with longer video descriptions of up to 2,200 characters. In essence, the text limit has now been upped to 2,200 characters, which is similar to the captioning on Instagram.

This is how TikTok puts it,  “With the extra space, we’re hopeful creators will have some extra room to build on the stories they’ve shared.”

Because TikTok is video-centric, the description isn’t the focus and the design of the app doesn’t even make the ‘caption’ readable. Shorter descriptions make the text easier to read. Longer video descriptions only push the text into the video, making it difficult to see the entire video.

We’re all used to seeing Instagram imitate TikTok. With the new Photo Mode feature, TikTok is now imitating Instagram in a new twist. The Photo Mode is making TikTok’s “For You” Page more like Instagram, albeit in less creative ways.

TikTok also announced new editing tools that allows users to be more creative with their content. “Content creators can now stack, trim and split videos,” the company said in the release, “as well as reposition and edit text, change the speed of a clip, edit sounds and add sound effects.”

With the new update you can easily customise your videos, sounds, images, and text. Editing and posting videos is possible on TikTok, however the new features give users more ways to experiment with their content and make it more intuitive.

TikTok is also introducing new sound tools, allowing you to cut, trim, and set the duration of sounds used in videos. Users can now also include sound effects.

If you’re a regular TikToker, you’d agree that sounds are an important part of the videos; and are frequently the foundation for most trends you see on the platform. It is therefore not surprising that the company is giving users more ways to incorporate sound into their content.

ByteDance TikTok’s new photo and text updates, Meta-owned Instagram’s push to becoming a platform that focuses more on videos (reels) and Twitter’s new video viewer; just explains how these major platform are vying for dominance. And if you think about, we really do not need 2,200 text characters on TikTok. Or do we?