Improve The News: Media

• Social media app TikTok announced that, as of Monday, the platform would begin supporting text posts in addition to existing features. USA Today
• The ByteDance-owned app – which is known mostly for its live videos, photos, duets, and stitches – follows in the footsteps of Twitter, Facebook, Threads, and other social media apps that have long featured the inclusion of text only posts. USA Today
• In a statement, TikTok said it has opened the app to text posts in order to “empower our creators and community with innovative tools that inspire self-expression.” ABC News
• This news comes weeks after TikTok launched a new music streaming service in several countries, allowing users to “listen, share, and download the music they have discovered on TikTok,” in addition to sharing their favorite music with other TikTok users. BBC News
• TikTok states its has more than a 1B users worldwide — though this is significantly short of the 2.3B users on Instagram, rsesearch shows TikTok's audience is younger. Guardian
• TikTok’s decision also comes during a time of accelerated change in the social media landscape, with Instagram’s parent company, Meta, this month having launched a text-based app called Threads, while Elon Musk’s Twitter this week unveiled a rebrand of the platform, which will be renamed X. CNN

Narrative A:

• TikTok, which has long dominated the short-video market, clearly sees an opening in other aspects of social media in light of Twitter's (now X's) fumbled rebrand and other mistakes made in since the platform was taken over. People were already finding ways to add text to their TikTok posts, but this function will make it easier and TikTok will attract more users with the improved functionality. X should be worried. TechCrunch

Narrative B:

• TikTok shouldn’t celebrate a victory prematurely. It still faces several obstacles, including concerns legislators in the US and other countries maintain over how the Chinese-owned app handles user data. TikTok is even facing bans in some parts of its user base. It looks like Threads’ challenge to X has slowed down, but TikTok has a long way to go before it will knock Musk’s platform off its perch. Forbes

Nerd narrative:

• There’s a 9% chance that the US will ban TikTok before 2024, according to the Metaculus prediction community. Metaculus

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LR: 5 CP: 3 - President Joe Biden’s staff were reportedly expecting questions from the press about his estranged granddaughter during a recent visit to Helsinki, Finland. However, reporters were mum on the topic.

LR: 3 CP: 5 - The new text-based posts can be paired with music, stickers and locations, similar to Instagram stories.

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