As of late TikTok has adopted Instagram Photo Mode

We’re all accustomed to seeing Instagram imitate TikTok at this point. With a new function called “Photo Mode,” TikTok is now emulating Instagram. With the change, users of TikTok can now publish several still photographs along with descriptions that are up to 2,200 characters long.

The new photo uploads, which may include music, will be displayed alongside videos on users’ For You pages. The recently expanded character count and Photo Mode, according to TikTok, should let creators “express themselves and more profoundly connect with others,” the company writes in a blog post.

But in less inventive ways, Photo Mode is also emulating Instagram on the For You Page. Mashable claims that producers are already using the ability to distribute repeated text memes and other material that is frequently popular on… Instagram.

But the fact that TikTok has now adopted Instagram’s original concept is particularly notable given that Reels, Instagram’s TikTok clone, supposedly has little interaction. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, TikTok continues to dominate Instagram Reels in terms of daily watch time.

It’s also the most recent instance of all social media platforms brazenly imitating one another until they start to resemble one another. Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat have all developed their versions of the French startup BeReal in the last six weeks alone (Instagram hasn’t officially launched yet). For full-screen videos, Twitter unveiled a feed modeled after TikTok. While TikTok cloned YouTube Shorts incorporated voiceovers in the TikTok fashion.

Creators who get 10 million views on Shorts in 90 days and have at least 1,000 subscribers can apply to join the Partner Arrangement under the new income-sharing program. Similar to TikTok, advertising on Shorts is interspersed with videos in the feed. For instance, Jimmy Donaldson, better known on YouTube as Mr. Beast, said earlier this year that despite receiving more than a billion views on TikTok, he had only made $15,000 from the platform. A well-known figure among YouTube’s highest-paid creators, Donaldson earned $54 million there in 2021. In May, TikTok announced that TikTok Pulse, a revenue-sharing initiative, was just getting started.