TikTok's Ambitious Expansion of its Messaging Features: What Job Postings Reveal

• TikTok

Recent job listings by TikTok hint at a potential expansion of their messaging features, suggesting an ambitious growth plan for enhancing user interactions and content sharing on the platform. The social media giant's job postings span various technical and product management roles, alluding to a collective effort to improve its messaging capabilities.

Expanding TikTok's messaging features could mark another threat from TikTok to rival platforms mainly built around linking users with their social connections.

TikTok allows users to direct message each other by selecting the corresponding button on the user's profile they wish to chat with. However, this feature is less conveniently placed or integrated within the platform than on counterparts like Instagram or Snapchat. As a result, users often resort to sharing TikTok video links via text rather than within the app.

Building a More Connected TikTok

By bolstering their teams working on messaging, TikTok could enhance the popular short-form video platform's features, allowing users to connect with people they know on the app. This expansion poses another threat to rival platforms that primarily focus on linking users with their social connections.

The new roles continue TikTok's ongoing efforts to incorporate tools and features that promote user interaction and strengthen real-world connections within the app. These features include a feed that only displays content from a user's friends and TikTok Stories.

Decoding the Job Postings

While the language used in these job postings remains relatively vague, some details can be gleaned. For instance, an engineering lead role for Singapore's "TikTok Social" team mentions: "We are the messaging team on TikTok. Our team's mission is to facilitate meaningful user connections through TikTok's messaging experience, which is still in its infancy." The role would entail working with other teams to deliver a unique TikTok social solution, such as messaging.

Another listing for an Android software engineer role on the "Social Interaction" team in San Jose, California, expresses the company's desire to enable "users to meet and interact with real-life friends seamlessly on TikTok."

Other similar job postings for the "Social Interaction," "TikTok Social," and "Social User and Relation" teams in Los Angeles and Singapore indicate that employees would work on features such as "Story, Video Like, Comment, Friends Tab, Inbox Tab, Repost, TikTok Now," pursuing the goal of fostering "meaningful social connections between users."