As competition with tech giants heats up, TikTok is rolling out new features to help keep its short-form video app ahead of rivals. Today, the company announced the launch of a new Green Screen Duet feature, which combines two of TikTok’s most popular editing tools to allow creators to use another video from TikTok as the background in their new video. It also confirmed the test of a new way to discover videos. They were called “Topics,” dedicated interest-based feeds featuring the top trending videos in a given category. Green Screen Duet joins a set of Duet tools that lets creators layout two videos side-by-side. Today, Duet layouts include “Left & Right,” “React,” and “Top & Bottom.” Creators currently use Duets to sing, dance, joke, act alongside another user’s video, react to a video’s content, or even watch a video from another, sometimes smaller, creator to raise awareness or call attention to its content.
Editing tools like Duet and Stitch are essential to what makes TikTok not just a passive video-viewing app but, relatively, a new type of video-first social network. It’s also proven popular; it has since been adopted by Facebook’s TikTok clone, Instagram Reels, known as Remix. Snapchat has been developing a Remix feature of its own, too. TikTok’s new Green Screen Duet will now appear as another option alongside the existing layouts. It will allow users to use another video in the background more quickly as they record their video overlaid on top. This sort of video experience is something TikTok creators already do in various ways. For example, they may capture images or screen recordings and then use other editing tools to create a green screen effect. Or they may react to a video using a Stitch instead, as that can be easier. A built-in Green Screen Duet feature offers another way to record new videos that include existing videos.
TikTok has been busy upgrading its interface to improve recording and discovering new video content in its app. The Duetted video plays in the background over the new video being recorded when the feature is used. TikTok believes the launch will inspire new formats for creativity and expression. Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat have tried to reproduce TikTok’s part set in their apps recently. For instance, TikTok launched interactive music features last month to get ahead. In another leap, TikTok is also testing a new Discover page in the app. Instead of only featuring the current trends, as before, it now organizes videos into categories.
These categories represent the many areas of interest on TikTok, like gaming, beauty, dance, TV & movies, sports, family, learning, and much more. When you tap into any category, you’re taken to a feed that includes the community’s top trending content. The meals will be affected by relevance, timeliness, and interest and can help users find new content and creators outside of their personalized For You page shows. TikTok confirmed the test has been rolling out in the U.S. over the past few weeks. The company also is currently testing e-commerce shopping features, where some brands like Hype and Walmart have been given a new “Shopping” tab on their TikTok profile where users can shop items, add to a cart, and then check out without leaving the app. (Walmart enabled its bill during its Livestream event in December, and it’s been there ever since.)
The integration is less elegant than Instagram’s Shops, as there’s no native, universal cart or integrated payment mechanism. Instead, users visit the retailer’s website directly. However, the advances TikTok makes have been paying off in capturing a large Gen Z user base. According to eMarketer, more Gen Z users in the U.S. now use TikTok than Instagram, or 37.3 million monthly active users compared with 33.3 million users, respectively. And by 2023, the firm predicts TikTok will surpass Snapchat in terms of total U.S. users, as well.
But TikTok’s global ambitions are impacted by its ban in India and the possibility that creators will find more monetization opportunities on established platforms. Yesterday, for example, YouTube announced a $100 million fund for top YouTube Shorts creators and said it would soon be testing ads on Shorts. That could help creators generate revenue from short-form content while converting casual viewers to channel subscribers with even more monetizing opportunities. Snapchat and Instagram have also been wooing creators with cash. Ultimately, if creators find they can make more money elsewhere, they could shift some of their attention away from TikTok, no matter how many innovative new features it adds.
