The huge Internet platforms are slowly merging to form a large monolith, and even the world's most famous companies are not immune to this trend. TikTok's winning strategy of focusing on short-form vertical video has found fans among other online platforms, and now TikTok is taking a page out of its competitor's books, reportedly borrowing from what made it famous.
TikTok is launching a new app called TikTok Notes that will allow users to post photos in an apparent attempt to take on Instagram, a service known for its still photo sharing feature. Naturally, Instagram expanded to include videos and Stories themselves, taking parts from other services and incorporating them into its own product.
Instagram's other Meta services are frequent borrowers as well. As is the case with almost every social service you can imagine. Remember those great stories that led everyone from Line to Spotify to Instagram to LinkedIn to try out the popular sharing format. If it works for one social media service, expect others to follow suit in some way at some point – perhaps sooner rather than later.
There is good logic behind this effort. The answer is why X wants to become a super app; The more service they can offer their user base to do, the more time they may spend within the walls of the app. Expanding the feature set can boost engagement time, and therefore the amount of revenue a social media service can generate. At the same time, bloat is a real issue that can dampen the user experience and cause the app to be exposed to Facebook in time.
This theme — the slow commoditization of digital services via sameness — is similar to the reason we see LinkedIn trying to imitate the gaming power of The New York Times, and to some extent the reason why big tech platform companies try to be good at everything: the never-ending need to increase revenue. Maybe that's why your favorite app always looks like an alien world over time. It will evolve away from what makes it special and unique, but because sticking to those weapons is not the way to create a service that will be used by as many people as possible. That's why you have to become Facebook.
