After Meta’s Threads, TikTok now wants to launch a ‘Twitter Killer,’ gears up for a major overhaul

It looks like TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is next in line to try and take down Elon Musk’s Twitter, just weeks after Instagram Threads tried to do so and failed. Makers of the controversial video-sharing platform have announced a new update that enables users to post text updates of up to 1,000 characters. Following the trend set by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, TikTok is joining the ranks of platforms embracing microblogging features similar to Twitter. TikTok users can now enhance their text posts by adding sound and location tags. Others can interact with these text updates by commenting and sharing them, just as they would with photo or video posts. This move allows TikTok to expand its content offerings and provide users with more ways to express themselves and engage with their audience. TikTok’s recent announcement about allowing text updates came shortly after Meta launched Threads, a text-based companion for Instagram. During this time, Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, revealed plans to impose limits on daily post views for non-paying users. Threads quickly gained immense popularity, amassing over 100 million users within its first five days. However, its daily user count reportedly decreased significantly after the initial burst it got at launch. In the competition to rival Twitter, various smaller apps like Bluesky, Mastodon, and former US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social have made attempts to attract users away from the platform, but without much significant success. Meta’s Threads posed a somewhat threat right when it launched, but within three weeks of its launch, the time spent on the app by user, as well as daily active user on the platform have dipped significantly, by over 50 per cent. The trend of social media platforms copying each other’s features is not new. For instance, Instagram introduced Stories in 2017 to compete with Snapchat, and shortly afterwards, almost every other platform, including Twitter with its Fleets feature, followed suit. Similarly, Instagram’s Reels was launched in 2020 to compete with TikTok, while YouTube introduced its own version called Shorts in the subsequent year. This copying of features is a common strategy for platforms to stay competitive and appeal to their users’ evolving preferences.