SOCIAL
TikTok Tests eCommerce Potential with ‘Small Gestures’ Virtual Gift-Giving Process

TikTok has launched a new initiative called ‘Small Gestures‘ which enables users to send free, virtual gifts from a range of brand partners within the app.

As explained by TikTok:
“By collaborating with our brand partners on this new program, we’re able to give users a platform to feel connected with their friends and family through the small gesture of sending a gift to someone who might need it most. And thanks to our generous partners, these ‘Small Gestures’ are offered free for all TikTok users to send gifts up to three separate times.“
Free? Yes – although the gifts on offer are fairly promotional in nature, without playing down their significance.
Among the gifts available in the app are:
- A 90-day subscription to Adobe Premiere Rush
- 1-month free DashPass subscription
- 90-day trial subscription for Pandora
- 2-month Premium Membership for Skillshare
So, it’s not physical products, they’re the kind of promotional or ‘freemium’ type offers many of these businesses use to get more people onto their books. But still, they are offers nonetheless. And they’re free, so no complaints.
To send a Small Gesture gift, TikTok users need to search ‘Small Gestures’ on the Discover Page in the app. You then need to tap on the purple banner for the program, and from there, you can select the offers you want to send. Tap on the offer, send it via message, and you’re done.
And while the stated aim of the program is to “provide comfort and “thinking of you” reminders to friends and family while we’re apart”, another element at play here is TikTok’s gradual evolution into eCommerce.
As we’ve noted previously, short-form video is notoriously difficult to monetize, with virtually no capacity for interruptive ads, and pre-roll promotions easy to skip. That means that TikTok needs to look to alternate promotion options, to both monetize for its own revenue purposes, and also to provide income streams for top creators.
In China, the Chinese version of the app, called ‘Douyin’, has seen significant monetization success via eCommerce integrations in the app.

Douyin reportedly generated over $122 million in revenue last year, mostly generated by eCommerce – which is more than 2x what TikTok brought in. And it’s clear from TikTok’s approach that this is also where it’s headed.
Already we’ve seen TikTok testing out its own eCommerce tools and external linking options in order to provide more revenue generation options for creators, while it’s also launched an influencer marketplace to promote this element.

TikTok is also promoting influencers as a more effective outreach option via its own TikTok ads posts.
That makes sense, but it will take more work, and involve a lot more complexity, for TikTok to establish an effective revenue generation stream through UGC and eCommerce integrations than it would to simply insert ads.
That means that it’ll take time, and the longer it takes, the more potential that some of the platform’s top creators will drift off to YouTube and Facebook instead, where they can make big money straight away. And with YouTube also looking to build its own TikTok clone, that could be problematic – unless TikTok can establish its next stage faster.
Which, maybe the ‘Small Gestures’ process will assist with.
If TikTok can start to establish transactional processes on the platform, that could help to lead users into new habitual behaviors, which will then connect into its eCommerce push. It’s essentially expanding on the activities that users can undertake within the app – you start with virtual gifts, then the transition into real, purchased gifts feels more natural, and makes more sense within the context of the app.
It’s a small part of the process, for sure, but it provides enhanced promotional opportunities for partner brands right now, while working to highlight the potential of the same systems for the next phase of direct shopping in the app.
As such, it’s a clever promotion from TikTok, and it may help to shape the next phase for the platform.
The ‘Small Gestures’ initiative is currently only available to US users.
SOCIAL
TikTok spends $1.5B on Tokopedia JV to get around Jakarta social e-commerce ban

Just two months ago, ByteDance-owned TikTok abruptly closed its shopping platform in Indonesia to comply with surprise regulations from the Southeast Asian country’s government. Jakarta ordered social media companies like TikTok and Facebook to stop selling goods on their platforms, demanding a separation of social media and e-commerce services.
TikTok now seems to have found a way to revive its e-commerce dreams in Indonesia by spending billions to start a joint venture with Indonesian tech giant GoTo. On Monday, the two companies announced that TikTok Shop will now be available on GoTo’s Tokopedia platform.
“Tokopedia and TikTok Shop Indonesia’s businesses will be combined under the existing PT Tokopedia entity in which TikTok will take a controlling stake. The shopping features within the TikTok app in Indonesia will be operated and maintained by the enlarged entity,” TikTok said in a statement Monday.
TikTok will invest over $1.5 billion into Tokopedia, taking a 75% stake in the platform. GoTo will remain an ecosystem partner to Tokopedia and receive an “ongoing revenue stream from Tokopedia commensurate with its scale and growth,” but will not be required to continue funding the platform. Further funding from TikTok also won’t reduce GoTo’s remaining 25% stake.
Getting back into the Indonesian ecommerce market will be a win for TikTok. Indonesia, which is the platform’s largest market outside of the U.S., is key to Tiktok’s online shopping aspirations. In June, CEO Shou Zi Chew pledged to “invest billions in Indonesia and Southeast Asia over the next few years.”
ByteDance wants to replicate its Chinese e-commerce successaround the globe. Last year, consumers spent in China 1.41 trillion yuan ($196 billion) on products sold on Douyin, the version of TikTok for the Chinese market, The Information reported in January. ByteDance, through TikTok, is expanding its online shopping services in both Southeast Asia and the U.S. Yet the company is struggling to win over American consumers: The Information reported in August that U.S. shoppers are spending just $4 million a day, equivalent to $1.4 billion over a whole year, on goods sold on the social media platform. (TikTok officially launched TikTok Shop in the U.S. in September, though sellers have complained about a flood of low-quality products on the platform).
Before Indonesia imposed its ban in September, the country’s president, Joko Widodo, complained that social media platforms were threatening local micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises. Government officials also accused TikTok of engaging in predatory pricing.
GoTo’s deal with TikTok means the Indonesian tech giant is giving up its majority ownership of Tokopedia . Tokopedia started in 2008 and grew to be one of Indonesia’s largest e-commerce platforms. The company merged with ride-hailing startup GoJek in 2021, becoming GoTo Group. The company debuted on Jakarta’s stock exchange in April last year.
Yet the company has struggled to wow investors since then. GoTo has yet to make a profit since becoming a public company. The tech firm reported 2.4 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($147 million) in net losses last quarter, significantly less than the 6.7 trillion rupiah ($428 million) it lost this time last year.
Investors do not appear to be thrilled by the news of GoTo’s TikTok partnership. Shares fell by over 19% by 2:30pm Indonesia time on Monday, erasing gains made late last week as rumors began to build of the new partnership.
SOCIAL
How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]
![How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic] How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1702266964_How-to-Train-ChatGPT-to-Write-in-Your-Brands-Tone.jpg)
Are you looking for ways to improve your ChatGPT output? Want to train it to write in a more unique tone of voice, in order to better suit your branding?
The Creative Marketer shares his ChatGPT prompt tips in this infographic. To enact these, add “Write like [INSERT CHARACTER]” at the start of your ChatGPT instructions.
TCM breaks things down into the following categories:
- Innocent
- Sage
- Explorer
- Ruler
- Creator
- Caregiver
- Lover
- Hero
- Everyman
- Magician
- Jester
- Outlaw
Check out the infographic for more information.
A version of this post was first published on the Red Website Design blog.
SOCIAL
Elon Musk reinstates far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Joe Buglewicz
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, on Sunday reinstated far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the social media platform, a year after vowing never to let him return.
Jones, who claimed that a December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators was a hoax, was banned from the platform — then still known as Twitter — in 2018 for violating its “abusive behavior policy.”
He was also sued by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and ordered by a judge in the case to pay up more than a billion dollars in damages last year.
Musk had himself promised never to let the Infowars host back on the social media platform, which he bought last year for $44 billion.
But following a poll Musk conducted on X asking whether Jones should be reinstated, to which some two million users responded, he flipped that decision.
“I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder said on X.
But Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action group which pushes for tighter gun laws, said that “defamation is not free speech.”
Musk’s decision comes the same week that the Sandy Hook families commemorate the 11th anniversary of the December 14 shooting, which Jones alleged was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.
Jones’ followers harassed the bereaved families for years, accusing parents of murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children had never existed.
It also came a week after Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X because of far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.
Asked whether he would respond to the advertising exodus, Musk said in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the advertisers could “go f*** yourself.”
Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, in which he hailed Jones’ “triumphant return”
US media reported that as of Sunday, the account of Jones’ controversial show Infowars was still banned.
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