TikTok unveils text posts

It’s been an eventful week for Big Tech: Just as Twitter rebranded to X, TikTok rolled out text posts.

When opening TikTok, users will now be able to select from photo, video, and text options to create a post. Text posts, which have a 1,000-character limit, include many of the same features as TikTok videos, letting users to record Duets, add sound, or tag their location. Other text features include stickers, tags and hashtags, and background colors for posts.

Previously, TikTok users could incorporate text into video and image posts. “It doesn’t seem like this drastically new feature set,” Brendan Gahan​, partner and chief social officer at creative agency Mekanism, told us. Still, he said “adopting even small feature sets” could lead people to spend additional time on the platform, boosting its ad revenue.

Gahan said it’s possible that TikTok is capitalizing on recent changes at Twitter: “A lot of advertisers are fleeing away from Twitter. [TikTok is] probably like, ‘Oh, whatever we’re working on, this might be a good time to expedite it and get it out, just in case some tiny percentage of brands just need another place to push text.’”

TikTok’s announcement comes on the heels of not only Twitter’s rebrand, but also after the latter drew criticism earlier this month for imposing rate limits. The announcement also follows the debut of Meta’s answer to Twitter, Threads, earlier this month.

The addition of text posts on TikTok isn’t the first time the platform has built out its content offerings. Last year, TikTok started letting users create image-based posts à la Instagram. It also offers Stories, which it started testing in 2021.

As social media apps add more capabilities, Gahan said the changes are becoming less novel. “As these platforms get bigger and bigger, they tend to look more and more similar,” he said.