Following Instagram and Snapchat, popular platform for teens and young adults TikTok on Thursday added a new “TikTok Now” feature that borrows the logic of BeReal with its dual front and rear cameras.
From now on, Chinese app users will receive a notification every day at a specific time to capture a day’s moment.
This logic picks up on that of BeReal, an application launched in 2020 by two French people that has gained popularity in recent months thanks to marketing aimed at spontaneity and regularity. At BeReal, the idea is to take a photo in selfie mode and in landscape mode to share with a small circle of close friends.
However, this new feature does not follow the policy of the TikTok application, which does not see itself as a social network like Facebook and focuses on interactions between people who know each other. This new feature comes just days after US startup NewsGuard released its investigation into misinformation posted on the Chinese app.
Fake news is pouring in
NewsGuard, an organization founded in 2018 to fight misinformation, released a poll on Wednesday claiming that “nearly 20% of the videos that appear in search results contain misinformation.”
However, the application says it has deployed an artificial intelligence that scans the videos posted to its news feed. TikTok also reminded NewsGuard that its policies “make it clear that we do not allow dangerous misinformation, including medical misinformation, and that such content will be removed from the platform.”
In the US, TikTok is in the crosshairs of many elected officials because of its parent company, the Chinese group ByteDance. They accuse the group of giving the Chinese government access to US user data, which it has consistently denied.
Claims that raise questions about the impact Tiktok and its competitors can have on misinformation, but also the mental health of its young audience.
Applications that race
According to web marketing consultant and lecturer Stéphanie Ouellette, this new feature is not surprising. “We see it, Instagram is trying to become TikTok and everyone wants to take over the functions of the other. It becomes a race to be the most used social network, so features that are popular with others are inherited by the competitor. »
Last July, Instagram introduced its “Dual” feature to its users, which copies BeReal’s idea of taking pictures simultaneously with the lenses on the front and back of your phone.
A marketing trend that, according to Ms. Ouellette, is unlikely to calm down as features are only thriving to allow these social networks to keep their users at their fingertips.