The year 2021 was a rewarding one for the several popular social media TikTok as it was known to surpass major milestones since its launch in September 2016. The Chinese app has which was known to be the 7th most popular domain in the year 2020, surpassed Google amongst other popular domains to earn the most popular domain in 2021. In August 2021, it unsurprisingly became the most downloaded app in the world, overtaking Facebook and Whatsapp amongst other social apps. This and many more were the remarkable milestones TikTok accomplished last year.
Now in 2022, in a bit to deliver more outstanding value to its numerous users globally the Chinese app is now testing its own version of Twitter-like retweet. With the introduction of this new “Repost” button, users will have the ability to share videos with their own followers on the platform effortlessly.
According to reports, the Repost button will come as an option in the “Share” menu. The share button comprises options to send the video content to friends via messages, texts or social media posts elsewhere. With the Repost button instead of sharing the video with friends directly via the options mentioned above, the video content is shared with your friends on TikTok. But unlike Twitter’s retweet, the reposted video content will not be displayed on your own TikTok profile — it only sends the video content out to your friends’ For You feeds. The button is also not available yet to TikTok users.
A typical example is, when a video gets to you through the Discover page or inbox from a friend’s share, you don’t get to see the Repost button being available there. It will only appear on videos from For You feed on the app. In other words, this feature provides a way of boosting the visibility of videos algorithmically recommended to you. However, it stops short of requiring users to create their own video to make that happen — by either stitching or dueting with the original content, which is how users re-share others’ videos today. This provides a low-friction way for users to engage with TikTok videos and re-share them and could encourage more passive users to participate on the platform.
According to TikTok, the repost button is currently being tested with a small number of users. However, it’s already gaining loads of traction on Twitter as users continue to upload screenshots of the new feature. Some people seem to believe it would be a new feature everyone has access to, but that may not yet be the case. A TikTok spokesperson said this while clarifying the feature’s functionality, “We’re always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience. Currently, we’re experimenting with a new way for people to share TikTok videos they enjoy.”
For users who would have access to the Repost button, users will be able to use the button when browsing the For You feed. After a tap on the button on a video you want to promote, TikTok then informs you that the video will be visible to your friends. TikTok also prompts you to share a few words about why you reposted the video. However, this addition doesn’t appear as comments on the video but are automatically flagged directly on the video itself above the creators’ name and video description. Here, users will see which friends have reposted the content and can tap the “reposted” label in other to read comments in a small, pop-up window. And should you change your mind about the video you want Reposted, with a tap into the Share menu and then another on “Remove Repost” you can undo that re-sharing. The message you’ve added will be deleted as well.
In some cases, TikTok users will most likely see the Repost button labelled as “Recommend” because the Chinese app is still sort of playing around with the language it wants to use here. But like the Repost, the Recommend button will prompt users to try to share why they’re re-sharing the video with others. If the Repost button is rolled out more broadly by TikTok, it could come as a new provision for creators to get their content discovered on a platform that is today more about algorithmic recommendations than it is about personal suggestions. The idea for this new feature may have come as a result of TikTok attention to how users have constantly leveraged on its in-app messaging system in other just to send videos to friends and are now trying to make provision for a system that incorporates that signal into the For You feed itself. With so much said about this social media platform, we hope you made a social media marketing strategy for it for 2022.
Olagoke Ajibola is a creative writer and content producer with an eye for details and excellence. He has a demonstrated history of telling stories for TV, Film and Online. Aside from being fascinated by the power of imagination, his other interest are travel, sport, reading and meeting people.
