Blog Post #2

During our last week's lectures, we looked at and compared our classes' social media usage to US teens where the survey looked at our consumption times over the most popular social media apps available today. This topic caught my eye as TikTok has become the prevailing social media app that every other social media app (especially Instagram and Snapchat) wants to be. TikTok was launched in 2016 and exploded in popularity over the past few years as they now have billions of active users. As a result, TikTok has become one of the prominent social media platforms where content creators and influencers focus their work. Due to the recent spike in popularity and the addictive algorithms that create the users "for you page", content creators and influencers have not only grown but also created their brands as a result of being active users. With this being said, the reason I found this topic so interesting is that we users are not the only people taking notice in TikTok's reign of dominance over the social media world. Other significant social media platforms like Instagram have taken notice and now action against TikTok's popularity spike. For example, Instagram updated their software and aded a "reel" section to their app that is almost identical to the entire basis of TikTok. You can now scroll through Instagram under their "reels" just like you would scroll through your TikTok "for you page". "The TikTok-ification of Instagram takes away the type of content people love most about the platform: photos from friends and family, as well as content based on their interests" (Alexander, 2022). In conclusion, do you believe that there should be some laws or regulations that attempt to stop or lessen the fact that other social media platforms can almost copy exactly what another platform is doing just because it is more successful?

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/dear-instagram-stop-copying-tiktok/


Comments

  1. Maddie ClarkOctober 3, 2022 at 3:03 PM

    Hi there,
    You raise an excellent point about the "TikTokification" on Instagram, this was something that I was unaware of until you mentioned that Instagram Reels are highly similar to the TikTok "for you page". In answering your question, I do believe that there should be some sort of standard in distinguishing the way that various social media platforms operate and the way in which they produce content. However, with that being said, I do also believe it is getting more difficult to cultivate different social media platforms that do not share similar components with each other. As both society and technology progress, I believe that the idea of having the same style of platforms will become more prevalent.

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