TikTok’s Testing a New Option to Invite Your Connections in Other Apps to View Your Clips, and Follow Your Profile

TikTok’s testing a new feature designed to help creators grow their following by inviting their connections on other apps to both view their clips and follow their TikTok profile in one fell swoop.

As you can see in this example, posted by Dan Schenker (and shared by Matt Navarra), the new option, which is now available to some users, enables you to share your latest TikTok clip via various third-party platforms. When your recipients in these other apps tap on the link to view your shared video, they’ll also automatically follow your TikTok account, helping to boost both views and followers.

Here’s how the new invite looks on the recipients’ end:

It’s a simple way to boost your TikTok audience, and connect with people you know on other platforms, who may or may not already be TikTok users.

Which is the key benefit for TikTok – by enabling users to invite others off-platform, that will bring more users back to TikTok, who’ll then need to sign-up for an account, if they don’t have one already, in order to view the shared clip.

There is, of course, a risk that this could be used for spamming, with users able to forward their clips onto all of their contacts on other networks. TikTok has limited this by only enabling you to share your clips with one contact at a time, while you can also only share with people that you’re already connected to in these other apps, which means you’re less likely to be forwarding your clips to strangers.

But there could still be some unwanted pushes from over-enthusiastic TikTokers looking to ‘growth hack’ their way to perceived popularity. Again, it seems a lesser concern, given the process, but it could still end up being problematic in some instances.

It may well be a handy way to get more of your connections to see your TikTok clips, and boost your connections among people who are more likely to leave you a like (because they know you), which could help to boost your broader performance. It’s not clear how many users have access to the function at this stage – we’ve asked TikTok for more information and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.