As Twitter shoots itself in the foot with a rebrand this morning, TikTok has announced that it’s rolling out support for text posts. Although TikTok started off as a platform for short-form video, it later added support for images in an attempt to take on Instagram. It’s now adding text posts, likely to take on Twitter (Now X) and Meta’s Threads, as users look for a new place to post text-based content.
TikTok says the new content option will allow creators to share their stories, poems, lyrics, and other written content on the platform, giving them another way to express themselves.
Now when you open the app’s Camera page, you will be able to choose from three options: photo, video and text. Once you select the text option, you will be taken to the text creation page, where you can type out the content of your post. Then, you can customize your context by adding sounds, tagging a location, enabling comments and allowing Duets. TikTok says text posts will be just as interactive and dynamic as any video or photo post.
You can add stickers to your text post, along with tags and hashtags. There’s also the option to choose from a variety of background colors. Similar to video or photo posts, you can save your drafts and store them with other unpublished posts for later editing or discard them entirely.
“At TikTok, we’re always looking to empower our creators and community with innovative tools that inspire self expression,” TikTok wrote in a blog post. “Today we’re thrilled to announce the expansion of text posts on TikTok, a new format for creating text-based content that broadens options for creators to share their ideas and express their creativity. With text posts, we’re expanding the boundaries of content creation for everyone on TikTok, giving the written creativity we’ve seen in comments, captions, and videos a dedicated space to shine.”
Although some people were unsure about TikTok’s decision to start supporting images last year, it’s now seen as an integral part of the app. It’s possible that we may see the same happen with text posts, especially since some users already post text-based content on TikTok in the form of a video or image. TikTok’s new feature simply makes it easier and more intuitive to add text-based content to the platform.
It’s no surprise that TikTok has decided to add support for text posts now, especially at a time when Twitter is continuing to make questionable decisions and putting limits on non-paying users. TikTok is likely looking to provide an alternative option for users who want to post text-based content. Meta did something similar with the launch of its Threads app earlier this month, which is continuing to grow its user base and traction in global markets. Of course, text posts on TikTok look different than they do on Twitter or Threads, so people might not use text posts on TikTok like they do on other platforms.
TikTok has dominated the short-video market, and is now once again looking to expand beyond the content format that made it famous in a bid to give users more ways to express themselves, while also taking on other popular social plaftorms.
Originally published at techcrunch.com