TikTok rolls out its begin personalized annual recap feature, ‘Year on TikTok’

Spotify Customers possess Wrapped and Instagram Customers own their Top 9. And now TikTok Customers can have their very own year-in-review feature, too.

The company at present introduced the launch of its first personalized annual recap feature with the launch of “Year on TikTok,” a video Spotlight reel that showcases particular person users’ own top TikTok moments.

This consists of things like how stretched you’ve been on TikTok, what kind of videos you watched most, your favorite tracks and artistic effects, metrics on how repeatedly you commented and shared videos, and more.

The feature can even establish your favorite “vibes” — meaning, the form of movies you want best, akin to crafts, cooking, animals, travel, Cottagecore or any of the now quite a few communities which have sprung up on the social video platform.

If Customers haven’t been on TikTok stretched sufficient to hold developed their very own “vibe,” TikTok says their “Year on TikTok” will include different top videos from its “Year on TikTok: Top 100” record instead.

The content for the recap is offered in a well-recognized way. You’ll vertically scroll down by a video that particulars your 2020 interests and activities. You then hold the possibility to share that video straight to your individual TikTok profile with the intention to obtain a particular profile badge that places a “2020” on top of your profile photo.

The app’s “Year on TikTok” page additionally consists of different TikTok highlights to browse through, together with top memes, top creators, top viral videos, more importantly impactful creators, top celebs, top songs and different year-end trends.

TikTok Customers can entry their “Year on TikTok” by tapping the icon on their For You feed — a outstanding placement — or by scrolling to the banner on the top of the app’s Discover page.

The accuracy of TikTok’s recap is debatable. For example, although each different video in my For You feed is said to politics and information (go figure!), TikTok informed me my top “vibes” have been things like home, journey and animal videos. That’s true too, but it’s an incomplete checklist and doesn’t match up with nearly all of my previous “likes.” Plainly TikTok could also be curating the expertise to give attention to extra optimistic “vibes” — and political videos and themes didn’t create the cut.

Regardless of its makes an attempt at spin, social options that provide Customers a customized retrospective of how they engaged with an app by way of the a period of 365 days possess confirmed to be pretty in style — and a great advertising and marketing mechanism, as well.

Spotify’s Wrapped, for instance, has been so well-received that folks started to complain that people’s Wrapped shares had been dominating and overwhelming their social feeds at year-end. Spotify this a period of 365 days partially addressed this drawback by providing new customization choices for its 2020 Wrapped that allow Customers alter the colour of their Wrapped card earlier than sharing. This way, the flood of Wrapped shares wouldn’t glare fairly as homogenous as in prior years, and could also be perceived as much less of an annoyance.

The “Year on TikTok” characteristic will probably do well, too, although it’s difficult to track. The hashtag #YearOnTikTok is as much as 5.4 billion views, due to Customers who’re adopting the tag in hopes of propelling their movies to a wider viewers or getting on the For You page. The actual check shall be what number of creators find yourself with the 2020 badge caught on their profile in the times to come.

While TikTok’s characteristic is fun, in the event you discover it considerably missing there are third-party alternatives.

One app, Retroplay, launched its own 2020 TikTok Year in Review this month. The app does extra than simply round-up your personal stats and metrics. Customers may vote for his or her favourite creators and movies by way of Retroplay’s “Superlatives” awards, accumulate playing cards from favourite creators and customise their very own Spotlight reel. However the app is brand-new and battling bugs — the Spotlight reel is at the moment down whereas it’s being fixed, for instance, and the app couldn’t resolve a username that started with a interval as a substitute of a letter, we found.

“We wanted to focus more on the year-in-review for content creators, and over the past two weeks have been working with creators to get their ideas. We’ve temporarily disabled the Highlight Reel feature based on feedback,” the builders responded in an e-mail to TechCrunch. They mentioned creators will give you the option to create their Top 4 or Top 9 video compilations by a brand new characteristic launching at the tip of the week.

The app additionally had problems pulling information as TikTok didn’t supply an API and cut them off from accessing public-facing person movies and pulling stats.

But the app’s design is catchy and the interactive options are engaging, so hopefully the developer can handle the opposite points quickly — and earlier than year-end!