After copying the French platform BeReal, this time TikTok attacks its faithful competitor Instagram, with a new feature: Photo Mode. What does it consist of? In what interest did TikTok choose to integrate this new feature? We tell you more about it!
We all know it, since the explosion of TikTok following the various confinements, the format of short videos has become the most successful and most used format of all. All platforms have chosen to develop this feature: Instagram has launched the Real, Youtube, the Shorts and Snapchat, which has also developed a short video tab. One could then believe that the time of classic publications such as carousels are over and yet! Carousels are one of the formats that generate the most engagement on Instagram. In fact, according to a study by Social Insider Data, carousels have an average engagement rate of 1.92%, compared to 1.74% for images and 1.45% for videos.
TikTok has therefore not ignored this and has seized on this format by launching its new feature: Photo Mode
Photo Mode is actually a dupe of the current Instagram carousels we know so well! Only available on the mobile version, TikTok’s new feature, Photo Mode allows you to upload different images and publish them as an album. But TikTok does not copy simply to copy! In fact, the platform copies by adapting the functionality to its own codes, since users will be able to add music in the background of their photo carousel.
Note that TikTok does not denature itself and respects its usual full screen format. The photos in this new carousel format will occupy 100% of your screen and like a classic TikTok video, users will be able to like, comment or save the content. This format will also be highlighted on the “For You” page, the homepage of the platform like the usual videos.
With Photo Mode, the platform hopes to develop and increase content production. TikTok has understood the engagement that this format generates and although video is the trendy format, its production takes more time than the publication of photos. So, with Photo Mode, creating content on the platform becomes easier giving more opportunity to silent users. A study on user behavior over a month shows that 68% of users watch other people’s videos, while 55% import their own videos (Globalwebindex, 2019).
The other interest of TikTok is obviously to compete with Instagram by taking it at its own game. The idea in introducing this new format and to make sure that the target only present on TikTok stays on TikTok and does not download the other social networks. And yes, 27% of TikTok users do not have an Instagram account, but we must not forget that Instagram still has more active users in the world than TikTok. In fact, at the end of 2021, Instagram had more than 2 billion active users, which is twice as many as TikTok, which has 1 billion (source: TikTok).
In addition, TikTok recently decided to increase the number of characters in the descriptions of different content. Creators can now describe their video using 2,200 characters. This new feature is really beneficial because many TikTok users felt restricted in their post caption, forcing them -when their text was too long- to invest the comments in several parts to share it with users. There was a lack of visibility of the message that the content creator wanted to convey because some Tiktok users don’t look at the comment section while others don’t want to waste time looking for the rest of the message transmitted in the caption in the comment section.
Today, we are in an area where every social network is looking to offer more and more features to improve the user experience. We saw it with BeReal, every concept idea is to be exploited and TikTok is not afraid to do it! A few weeks after its launch of TikTok Now – dupe of BeReal – the network increases its number of characters in description and deploys the Photo Mode. But beware, Instagram has not yet said its last word and the race to standardize the Internet is well underway.
To better understand this new network in perpetual evolution, we have written a white paper that lists all the information you need to integrate TikTok into your digital strategy.
