Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has decreased. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.
This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.
Similar to the hot Gen Z app BeReal, TikTok Now will prompt its U.S. users to take a front and back camera photo or 10-second video at a random time every day, which is then shared with friends in a new section labeled “Now” in the app’s main navigation — quite a prominent position for an unoriginal feature.
The addition initially seems like an odd one for TikTok, given its primary focus is on video entertainment, not friendship-focused social networking, which is what BeReal’s all about. But we have seen some signs in recent months that TikTok’s ambitions are aimed at taking on both areas. The company has been pushing more features designed to connect its users with their real-life friends on its app, for example by asking for access to users’ address books, and even swapping out its Discover tab for a Friends tab. Plus, as you browse your For You feed, you’ll also see recommendations of people to follow. Some users report that people they know have been finding their TikTok accounts thanks to what appears to be based on address book-based phone number matching, as well. (And they’re not all happy about it.)
Meanwhile, TikTok hasn’t been entirely transparent about what it’s up to here, but this BeReal clone makes it a lot more obvious: it wants users’ friend graphs. It wants to be a social network, too.
This reason is simple. Younger, Gen Z users are adopting new online behaviors when it comes to social networking. They’re moving away from older social networks, like Facebook, and have even begun to find Instagram increasingly crowded and annoying with its Reels focus. Gen Z instead is using video networking on apps like Yubo, and checking in on close friends through apps like BeReal. If TikTok doesn’t move into these areas, too, then this in-demand demographic will continue to take part in these new networking experiences in other apps, potentially impacting the time they have to spend on TikTok — which hurts its own business. It would also prevent TikTok from developing features that cater to real-world friends in the future, which could make its app more comprehensive than the video timewaster it is today.
