What you need to know:

• TikTok looks to be on the cusp of rolling out its very own Instagram rival, after users began reporting in-app notifications referring to the launch of a new photo-sharing app called ‘TikTok Notes’ app.
• Despite growing evidence that the launch is imminent, the company has remained light on the details, telling reporters it is “exploring ways to empower our community to create and share their creativity with photos and text in a dedicated space for those formats”.
• The impending launch comes at a “precarious” time for the app, per Forrester’s Mike Proulx, as Chinese parent company ByteDance faces the threat of a ban in the US and creators heed cues to build up their presence off-platform. Meanwhile, he says Instagram’s own short-form video offering – Reels – is making ground with teenage users whilst TikTok usage plateaus.
• While little concrete is known about the rollout, Social Soup’s Jess Hope suggests the new app will be integrated with the flagship platform, allowing TikTok Notes to convert existing users à la Instagram’s Threads. But both Hope and Proulx note the app will have to woo users past the initial curiosity factor if it is to succeed – and that will ultimately come down to community, user experience and algorithms.
• Strategically, Hope perceives TikTok Notes as an effort to address an engagement gap, rather than build TikTok’s reach. She says that TikTok might be looking to create a channel for everyday users to create lo-fi content, pointing to the one-way creator-led content stream that dominates TikTok currently.
• Copycatting is now part and parcel of 'innovation' in social media – Meta’s Stories, Reels and Threads were all inspired by competitors. However, Proulx warns that TikTok won’t be guaranteed success with this method, and Digivizer’s Emma Lo Russo thinks TikTok may struggle to compete with the popularity of Instagram.
• The move is also unlikely to make a significant impact on social ad spend – at least for now. “Meta dominates the social ad market and, despite the challenge from TikTok, that dominance is growing,” says WARC Media’s Alex Brownsell.
• As TikTok contends with is biggest legal threat to date in the US, Brownsell suggests that the new app is another effort to by ByteDance to identify “potential alternative revenue” in the case that “a US ban on TikTok ever [comes] to pass”.

The internet is abuzz with speculation that Meta’s Instagram may finally have a rival on its hands, with short-form video juggernaut TikTok reportedly on the cusp of launching its own photo sharing social media play, TikTok Notes.

The looming launch trickled into the mainstream last month, when some TikTok users were pinged with in-app Notes notifications.

Theses prompted users with a toggle to select whether they would like to opt in to push their photo posts onto the new app.

“TikTok Notes, a new app for photo posts, is coming soon! Your existing and future TikTok photo posts will be shown on TikTok Notes,” read the notification, which has been circulated on Reddit.

Forrester’s VP, research director – CMO practice, Mike Proulx, says the in-app notifications signal that the TikTok Notes launch is “imminent” – and the existence of a TikTok Notes holding website suggests the same.

TikTok has confirmed something's brewing, but remained light on official details.

"As part of our continued commitment to innovating the TikTok experience, we're exploring ways to empower our community to create and share their creativity with photos and text in a dedicated space for those formats,” said a TikTok spokesperson.

The ambiguous statement has left many trying to join the dots to determine what the new app might mean for users and advertisers alike – and whether it will pose a genuine threat to Instagram.

Doubling down on engagement

Proulx notes that TikTok’s investment in a new offering comes at a ‘precarious’ time for the company, as the company faces plateauing usage, which has been exacerbated by its “uncertain future in the US” as the US Senate mulls over a bill that would require the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest its US assets or face a total ban – more on that later.

In the short term, Proulx says the uncertainty has driven creators elsewhere as they “scurry to diversify their presence on alternative platforms”. 

According to Forrester’s 2023 Youth Survey, TikTok’s weekly usage amongst US teenagers dropped one percentage point year-on-year to 68 per cent, while Instagram grew to 63 per cent. And while the ByteDance-owned app remains dominant in short-form video, Instagram’s Reels is quickly gaining ground, with usage rising 11 points year on year – now 30 per cent of US teenagers use Reels at least weekly.

For now, commentators can only guess how the launch might roll out, though many assume that TikTok will integrate its user base with the flagship app – a pretty safe bet given the notification that kicked off the speculation to begin with and the most logical approach.

“If TikTok Notes ends up launching as a stand-alone app, it’ll be a challenge to amass a user base at scale from scratch,” says Proulx. “But if TikTok uses Meta’s playbook for Threads, it can mobilise its existing users as a means to onboard them to the new app.”

Proulx says that the key issue will be creating a “compelling enough experience” to keep users on the app “beyond the initial curiosity factor”.

Head of growth and innovation at Australian creator marketing agency media Social Soup, Jess Hope, suggests TikTok Notes is addressing an engagement issue on the flagship app, rather than trying to expand its reach.

“From a user perspective, my gut feel is that it's to encourage more everyday users to post.”

Unlike other social media apps, she says TikTok has cultivated a consumption habit that is one-way for a large cohort of its users that are not actively creating content – largely because of the high production efforts associated with creating videos natively in the app, versus posting static images.

She says that leaves TikTok with “all of this untapped engagement” that could be channelled into the kind of lo-fi  content creation from everyday users that currently dominates the likes of Instagram, Facebook, and X. It’s Hope’s assumption that this is the type of content TikTok will be looking to recreate with Notes – “you’ve potentially got that kind of everyday person who is really just showing their life rather than sharing content, which I think is exciting”.

Hope suspects the launch will be met with an initial flurry of downloads that is likely to taper off after the initial excitement, with a core community “really playing with the platform and getting used to it”.

Naturally, she says the new format will pose a challenge for creators, but that it will ultimately be an opportunity to “reinvigorate the creator landscape and also just the creative world”.

“Brands need to be more creative,” she says. “I think the challenge of a new platform ideally will lead to that. I'm not really sure what the ad format will be TikTok Notes, but I imagine it will be much the same as Reels or Instagram’s feed.”

Copycatting won’t guarantee success  

TikTok is not the first to be accused of coming for another social media player’s territory, perhaps taking its cues from the copycat behaviour that has served Meta so well. 

“The copycat phenomenon runs rampant across social media platforms and, when done right, they pay off,” says Proulx.

“When Instagram copied Snapchat with its ‘stories’ feature, it eventually became more popular than Instagram’s feed.”

The platform has since gone on to duplicate TikTok’s short-form video format with Reels, and has launched the off-app Threads platform to capitalise on the decline of X.

But copycat features don’t have a 100 per cent success rate – a stories-style bid created by Twitter (now X) flopped by comparison and was ultimately sunset in late 2021.

Likewise, Meta’s Threads hasn’t quite taken off as the social media giant might have hoped.

CEO and founder of measurement platform Digivizer, Emma Lo Russo says that TikTok might find itself in a similar position with Notes.

Though users will look to different platforms for different use cases, she says TikTok Notes may struggle to compete against Instagram in the photo-sharing space.

“Instagram is really popular with a younger demographic who really use it to shape who sees what (curated audiences), where conversations happen in DMs, fun stories, serious stories and then highly curated post/feed stories which is fundamentally different to the way users use TikTok now,” she says.

“There will be a lot required to move their users away from strengths of individual platforms and uses, into a single platform trying to be all things to all people.”

But Lo Russo notes that TikTok will have the strength of its algorithms in its corner, which see says “are the best at quickly curating to personal preferences” and may “drive greater adoption within platform”.

Forrester's Proulx agrees that algorithms will be key. He says that as social media features become increasingly “ubiquitous” that the differentiating factors will really only come down to “community, user experience, and, yes, algorithms”.  

How will TikTok notes impact social media ad spend?

With marketing budgets already tightening in a tough microeconomic climate, Meta will be hoping to hold onto its share of the social media ad market.

While little is known about what the TikTok Notes ad model might look like, it’s assumed it will eventually look to monetise the new platforms, threatening to further fragment ad spend in the digital sphere.

Meta is yet to respond publicly to the developments, and declined Mi3's request for comment, but head of content at World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) Media, Alex Brownsell, says the social media giant has little to worry about at this stage.

"Meta dominates the social ad market and, despite the challenge from TikTok, that dominance is growing,” he says. “The launch of TikTok Notes is unlikely to have a significant impact on ad spend patterns.”

According to WARC Media’s forecasts, Meta will earn US$155.6 billion in ad revenue in 2024, representing a 63 per cent share of total social media ad investment globally – up from 61 per cent in 2023.

While TikTok has grown rapidly from ad revenue perspective, Brownsell says the platform accounts for less than a tenth of the worldwide social ad market.

Noting the continued trend of “homogenisation” of the social and digital app ecosystem, Brownsell says it will be TikTok’s responsibility to “ensure it is covering all bases for both users and advertisers”.

The looming threat of a US TikTok ban

All of this comes at a time when TikTok is facing an unprecedented threat to its presence in the US market – and arguably the global West.

The flagship platform of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, TikTok’s future currently hinges on the verdict of the US Senate, which is currently considering a bill put forward by the nation’s House of Representatives. The bill, which was passed 352-65 by the House on March 13, would give ByteDance a six-month deadline to divest its TikTok assets in the US, or face a total ban.

In that context, ByteDance “appears intent on identifying potential alternative revenue” in the case that “a US ban on TikTok ever [comes] to pass”, suggests WARC's Brownsell.

He says that ByteDance is also likely to be looking at the trends in China, where photo-sharing app Xiaohongshu has “found notable success with image-based content and e-commerce functionality”.

Outside of the US, the company has also been in hot water locally over concerns about the security of Australian user’s data – a national ban of the app on all government devices has been in place since April last year.

Investigations in the US and Australia, as well as numerous other markets, are part of a broader shift in public attitudes towards the social media industry.

TikTok and Meta have both been facing heightened scrutiny over their growing economic and social dominance, with Meta’s continuing battle with Australian lawmakers over its obligation to pay Australian publishers for their news content one of several regulatory hurdles now looming. 

Meanwhile, Australia's Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media has recommended extending the ban on TikTok on government devices to those working in critical infrastructure – which could include workers across food and grocery to financial services, communications, healthcare, utilities, transport, education and beyond, taking out a big chunk of the marketing industry.

It also recommended that if the US government forces ByteDance to divest of TikTok, the Australian government should consider doing the same.