TikTok Stories are now a thing because everything needs disappearing videos

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Tiktok On iPhone
Tiktok On iPhone (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • TikTok is the latest app to get disappearing videos.
  • The new videos will disappear after 24 hours.

TikTok is the latest social network to add some version of Snapchat's disappearing messages, this time in the form of TikTok Stories. According to the feature's messsaging, new stories will disappear 24 hours after they were posted to the service.

The new feature was first reported by Matt Navarra on Twitter, with The Verge also getting the lowdown from a TikTok spokesperson.

Put simply, TikTok Stories are videos that will disappear 24 hours after they were first posted to TikTok. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's something that's been around forever thanks to Snapchat, Instagram, and even Twitter. We've been here before, except this time it's all happening in the TikTok app.

"We're always thinking about new ways to bring value to our community and enrich the TikTok experience," a TikTok spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Verge. "Currently we're experimenting with ways to give creators additional formats to bring their creative ideas to life for the TikTok community."

People will be able to tap on a TikTok user's profile to see their stories, and this is a video-only situation — no posting a collection of photos like you can on Instagram, for example. It's also worth noting that this is a test that TikTok is running, so you might not see the feature live everywhere and for every user. At least not just yet.

While TikTok isn't the first to try stories of some kind, Twitter will tell it that it isn't all sunshine and roses in the world of disappearing video. Its own Fleets feature was recently killed off after a similar experiment.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.