Facebook and Snapchat concede that the future of social media is like TikTok

Snapchat invented the Stories format to share disappearing photos and videos. The company is now pointing out with Facebook that the future of social media is similar to TikTok.

In a comment to investors in Thursday’s quarterly earnings report, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said less time was spent watching friends’ stories in apps. Instead, Snapchat users are increasingly flocking to watch videos on Spotlight, watching Snapchat’s rival TikTok for viral videos posted by random creators, and Discover sections for premium shows.

 

 

Snap doesn’t detail exactly what the content area changes will be, but it’s easy to imagine that the tabs will look like TikTok when opening a full-screen video from the Spotlight creator.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook parent company Meta, also identified TikTok as a formidable threat this week. “People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,” he said during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. Unlike Snap, which is still growing its user base and showing better-than-expected revenue growth, Meta disappointed investors with its earnings report this week, wiping out more than $200 billion of its market value in a day — beating the record it previously set in 2018.

So while the business development of Snap and Meta has been revealed, it’s worth noting that they both see TikTok as a competitor. Whether it’s a story or a TikTok video feed, a compelling new format can quickly get your attention. Snap has now invented a ubiquitous format, but now Meta is catching up with it.