TikTok just announced a major revamp of one of the platform’s most frequently used features: the comment section. TikTok users will now be able to share 60-second voice notes and polls as comments.
The voice-note feature will show up as a microphone icon in the comment box and will roll out globally over the next month, TikTok said in a press release, but only for users 18 and older. The new commenting format will likely be a trial by fire for TikTok’s increasingly AI-powered content moderation tools, which were involved in a false-flag controversy recently.
The Polls feature, on the other hand, has been rolling out slowly over the past few weeks, as some eagle-eyed users may have already noticed, but it will now be made available for all accounts globally. The feature will be accessible via a poll icon in the comment box but will only be available when creators comment on their own video. Once the user clicks the icon, they will be able to choose up to 5 options to vote on and set a timeframe for when the poll will close.
“As votes come in, creators can track results directly in the comment section, making it easy to see how the conversation is trending in real time,” TikTok said in a blog post announcing the features.
The platform is also revamping the photo comment feature. Instead of a single photo, commenters can now add a live photo or a carousel of up to 9 photos in a single comment. Live Photo is out now globally, while Photo Carousel is rolling out over the next month.
“For instance, if someone wants to react to a travel video with their own vacation photos, they no longer have to pick just one; they can drop the whole album in a single comment,” TikTok said in the blog post.
The changes symbolize an interesting shift in how users spend their time on TikTok. Once just an addition to the “For You” page, aka the main feed of algorithmically curated short videos, the TikTok comment section has become a world of its own.
More than 1.7 billion comments are posted on TikTok every day, according to the company. That deluge has turned comment sections into miniature forums, complete with self-referential jokes and a language all their own. TikTok accelerated that evolution by allowing users to reply with photos and GIF stickers, which quickly became ubiquitous across the platform.
A quick scroll down the For You page and the accompanying comment sections shows that creators are already adopting the Polls feature, which began rolling out to select users a while ago. It will be interesting to see whether the other three features will be met with similar interest and perhaps further evolve the comment section into its own self-sustaining social feed.
