It’s Twitter’s turn to “clone” TikTok via “Videos for You”

Twitter is in the midst of a “scandal” with Elon Musk, with the billionaire once again wanting to buy the company, and its representatives now in doubt whether to accept the original offer again. However, the social network’s operations are not at all affected by this situation. While the company’s leaders deal with the possible deal and the details surrounding it, development teams are adding new features to Twitter. One of them would be a TikTok clone, because that seems to be all the rage in social media this year.

TikTok clones are coming to Twitter

Twitter has introduced something called Videos for You, a carousel of videos in its mobile app that gives users suggestions based on their preferences or trends of the moment. Basically, Twitter searches for clips across the network and quickly serves them up in an easily accessible place. Of course, these clips, once accessed, take up the entire screen vertically and you can scroll up and down to the next one.

Basically, Twitter is cloning TikTok, just as Meta did with Reels and YouTube did with Shorts. This isn’t even the first time Twitter has cloned features of other social networks. Fleets, its Stories clone, was quickly abandoned, however, but Twitter Spaces, its Clubhouse clone, still exists and seems to be in use.

Perhaps the folks at the top of Twitter now regret shutting down Vine, a network they bought long ago that offered something similar to TikTok, but many years earlier: short clips in an easy-to-navigate feed.

For starters, the TikTok clone will be available on the iOS app for those using the English-language app. It will probably be released on Android and other languages soon after. First impressions of the feature are that it doesn’t offer as good recommendations as TikTok, with clips chosen based on popularity on Twitter rather than the interests of users who get them in their feed.