TikTok: Chinese-owned app adds text feature as social media war heats up

Video streaming app TikTok is to offer text-only posts as it becomes the latest technology giant to challenge X, Elon Musk’s rebranded Twitter platform.

The Chinese-owned app says the new feature gives users “another way to express themselves”.

Earlier this month, TikTok launched a new music streaming service to rival platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

The announcement comes as Twitter ditches its famous blue bird logo and switches to a black and white X.

TikTok users will now be offered three options on the app – whether to post photos, videos or text.

They will also be able to customise posts by adding sound, location or Duets, which are video reactions to posts by other TikTok users.

“These features make it so your text posts are just as dynamic and interactive as any video or photo post,” TikTok said in a statement on Monday.

It came just weeks after TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, launched a new music streaming service, TikTok Music, in Brazil and Indonesia.

Last week, the company also rolled out a beta version of the service in Singapore, Mexico and Australia.

A spokesman said it would allow users to “listen, share and download the music they have discovered on TikTok, as well as share their favourite tracks and artists with their TikTok community”.

The app is testing other features including a new landscape mode with select users around the world.

Popular social media platforms such as Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads, as well as Mr Musk’s X, already support text posts.

Earlier this month, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said his company’s Threads platform had signed up more than 100 million users in less than five days.

On 5 July, Threads went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries, including the UK.

Also this week, the blue bird on social network Twitter was replaced by a logo featuring a white X on a black background.

The term tweets will also be changed to “x’s”, according to Mr Musk.