Those who own the social media app musical.ly may be in for a surprise today. If you haven’t noticed already, the short-form karaoke video platform now has a new look and name, and that’s TikTok.
Following musical.ly’s acquisition by Chinese company ByteDance, the app has now been folded into said company’s own TikTok app. The new platform features a new logo and interface, with all musical.ly accounts being migrated over. Old content has also been migrated over, so there’s no need for alarm. Still, the new app is said to offer greater capabilities for video creation.
The main idea the new app strives for is to unify popular elements from both the musical.ly and TikTok apps. A feed exists to highlight users within one’s community. Additionally, a ‘For You’ feed provides personalised video suggestions based on users’ preferences. Upcoming features are also in the works, including:
- A “reaction” feature that allows user to react to friends’ videos directly from the phone;
- Enhanced creative tools like interactive gesture filters unlock features such as funhouse mirror camera effects;
- VR-type filters that can be activated just by blinking;
- Green screen-like background effects.
“musical.ly recently reached a new milestone of 100 million monthly active users and we are excited to enter into a new chapter,” says Alex Zhu, co-founder of musical.ly and Senior Vice President of TikTok. “Combining musical.ly and TikTok is a natural fit given the shared mission of both experiences – to create a community where everyone can be a creator.”
As part of TikTok’s commitment to creators, TikTok will launch a series of new creator programs to provide technical support, performance insights and guidance on growth strategy.
In addition to an enhanced user experience, TikTok’s new safety center provides tips and resources to help users safely build their online experience. The app also protects users from addiction, hosting a screen time management alert when users are on for more than two hours.
TikTok is available now to new users everywhere via the App Store or Google Play store. Existing musical.ly users will automatically upgrade to TikTok when they update the current app.
