TikTok vs Instagram
A comparison between the two apps based on a UX perspective
Little intro about TikTok
So, if you don´t know nothing about TikTok, there are two interesting people on it, I would say they are Alex Zhu and Zhang Yiming , you can read more about them on Business Insider.
Also I strongly recommend to have a look at this Ad Age TikTok Pitch:
The Table Comparison
With the Covid lockdown many people are downloading TikTok App, so I decided to make a little research together with Instagram. Above I made a table comparing some features with Instagram.
First I have to say I compared TikTok mainly with Instagram, so that includes Instagram Feed and Stories. I had a look to IGTV and other Facebook Apps such as Lasso. What Zuckerberg said is that he plans to merge all these in one (Facebook + WhastApp + Instagram + IGTV)
So, focusing in my table first point. Let´s talk about Ads! While I am writing this, there are not many Ads at TikTok, I´m afraid this will probably change. You can make Ads, of course, you can check the TikTok Advertising guide, explaining all kind of Ads TikTok has. By now you only see some Brand take over at the beginning and it´s all. Some say TikTok has a different business model.
If we turn to Instagram, I already posted about it, what do we have? Now, for the feed you see and Ad for every four posts, and for the stories you see an Ad for every for users. This is a relation 4x1. Maybe this is good for marketing and their revenue, blah blah blah. But for the user this is too much. What do I mean with too much? Almost 20% of content are Ads, this is so invasive, so user-unfriendly.
Let´s think about content, “Content is king” as Bill Gates said. Problem for Instagram is that they began as a social photo App. Then video came, in fact TikTok has reshaped the market of video sharing whereby content is being created young people. I am not sure why Instagram has not moved yet stories to their Home, so when you launch you would see Stories directly instead of Feed, surely they have thought about this or maybe they prefer User to jump into IGTV App.
So, if we think in content, we´ve passed from the “Everyone is a photographer” to “Everyone is a videomaker”, or from “Everyone is happy” (Instagram) to “Everyone has fun” (TikTok). Instagram is about beauty, travel, food, and TikTok is about dancing, coreography, fun. Actually Instagram feed is shorter than before, they try user to be focused on video (usually stories).
This is a question I have: What is first? Content? The algorithm? The audience? Everything is related but probably the audience is the big difference here, Instagram goes for GenY (Millenials), while TikTok goes for GenZ (baby boomers). Audience sets the content, content makes the algorithm, or maybe is the other way? They say young influencers are moving to TikTok…
So how are algorithms working? I would talk in two ways, one is for the discovering (feed) and other for the creators. What this Apps want is to keep you in the App and keep you as long as possible. It is studied that people at TikTok spend more time on the App than an average Instagram user, could be related to user age or content. Also I should say TikTok has an opened feed, you have these two buttons “Following” and “For you”, I think the point here is the “For you” button, where you discover new users and videos.
A nice experiment you can do is changing the App language, I changed from Spanish to English and the content changed considerably.
Here two videos about how the algorithms work:
See this post from abba Keynejad:
And for Instagram right here:
A couple of things more to compare: TikTok had the feature to share outside the App. And for Star features, obviously TikTok is video centered, you can even edit them or work with their templates. I think Challenges, Imitation features are pushing hard here.
Lastly, a point about animation. So Instagram stories move left to right, and TikTok moves up down. What´s better? I don´t know. Also think that Instagrams moves in auto (keeps on advancing) while on TikTok you stay on the loop. I should say one is passive the other active, more interaction maybe, gonna see it below.
Sitemaps
These are some sorted versions for both, they are quite similar.
And for Instagram. Well sometimes you can be watching stories and suddenly you are on IGTV
Interaction
This is one of the points that really has my attention. I made a couple of screenshots from both Apps, just posting stories, and I saw the difference. My mani conclusion is that TikTok interaction area is bigger and has more options for the User.
To demonstrate this: Here you can see a detail view of main screen at TikTok, user has more than ten options. Can change what he sees from “Following” to “For you”, can have a look at the user profile he is watching, give likes (love), make comments, share (inside share there are nice options as duets, etc.), imatate (lip sync), and basic options from the Tab Bar (Home, Search, Post, Inbox, Profile). I specially like the Search options you have in TikTok App. Also you have more options about tagging, hashtags and audio played.
