What Is TikTok Notes? New Photo App Could Rival Instagram | Laptop News

When trying to share photo posts to the majority-video app TikTok, some users have reported a pop-up notification informing them photos will also be posted on a “coming soon” platform called TikTok Notes (with an option to opt-out of the cross-platform sharing).

A site called notes.tiktok.com is currently live on the web with a nonfunctioning “open app” button that teases polaroid-looking posts featuring a still photo and caption, much like the posts that once dominated Instagram, which was bought by Facebook parent company Meta in 2012.

TikTok told the BBC it is working on a “dedicated space” for photos and text but has not finalized the design of the Notes app or confirmed a release date.

Modern Retail, an online news source covering the retail industry, has reported TikTok has recently encouraged brands to increase use of its photo carousel feature, which allows users to scroll through multiple still photos, promising those posts get almost three times as many comments and 2.6 times as many shares than video posts, on average.

Karen North, an expert in digital social media and professor at the University of Southern California, told Forbes a move toward photo sharing does not necessarily mean video isn’t still the biggest thing in content creation, but that TikTok is also looking to engage the large percentage of people who aren’t comfortable on video or being filmed.

And still photos…