Outside of the United States, TikTok's BeReal clone is now accessible as a separate app.
Over the weekend, TikTok released TikTok Now, a separate mobile app, in international regions outside of the United States, mostly on iOS. It is a BeReal clone. The app provides a feature set comparable to the TikTok Now experience being added to the TikTok app in the United States, which was unveiled last week. However, because it is a separate smartphone application, users can choose to sign up to get push notifications only for these social check-ins, even if they have TikTok alerts turned off.
On Thursday, September 15, 2022, the firm announced that the TikTok Now experience will be available as a standalone mobile app in select areas, but it has not yet done so. Additionally, it was unclear when the app would launch and whether users would have access to the functionality within TikTok or as a separate app.
Data from mobile analytics company Sensor Tower indicates that the TikTok Now app went live in all countries late on September 18, 2022. The TikTok Now app, a recent big release from one of the most well-known applications in the world, is still not included among the Top Overall iPhone Apps in any market at the time of writing.
Nevertheless, it has barely made it into the top 100 iPhone Social Networking applications in five markets—Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, Malta, and Singapore—and is included in the Top 500 iPhone Social Networking apps in 38 nations. There are a number of these countries, including Myanmar, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Germany, Qatar, Poland, Belgium, New Zealand, Guatemala, Austria, Bahrain, South Africa, Finland, Ghana, Czech Republic, Vietnam, Greece, Ireland, Azerbaijan, Israel, Nigeria, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Algeria, Malaysia, Sweden, Italy, Morocco, Lebanon, Mexico, Denmark, Egypt, Dominican Republic, and Romania.
The app also has an Android version, but it's only available in Bermuda and has no rating outside of Bermuda.
The goals of TikTok's new experience, which is blatantly a copy of the popular smartphone app BeReal, are evident in its global release. Similar to BeReal, TikTok Now randomly notifies users through push notification each day to shoot a picture or video using both the front-facing and rear-facing cameras on their phone. In order to participate, users have a three-minute window in which to take their pictures or 10-minute movies. Following that, friends may view each other's images in the app's Friends feed or postings from other users in the Explore stream.
It appears that TikTok thinks it may succeed with this social model in markets where BeReal hasn't yet established itself. However, it could be challenging given that BeReal is now ranked first in at least nine markets and among the top five iPhone applications globally in almost 40 different nations. However, according to statistics from Sensor Tower, its main markets are the U.S., France, its country of origin, and the U.K. That makes a sizable portion of the world open to competition. (Plus, we should point out that a simple format like this is easy to copy.)
TikTok declined to elaborate on its TikTok Now approach, particularly the reasoning behind its decision to make TikTok Now a feature in the United States but its own app almost everywhere else. The business would only state that it is "experimenting" with the feature and hopes to improve TikTok Now as it discovers how the community responds to it.
