TikTok unveiled a new web-based experience that features:
- Modular Design – featuring a repositioned navigation bar and a more immersive viewing experience that expands to fill the height of your browser.
- LIVE Game Streaming – available in portrait or landscape mode, allowing desktop users to view a full-screen horizontal view.
- Floating Video Player – a flexible floating window that keeps TikTok visible above other windows, available exclusively on desktop via Google Chrome. This works great! Now I can write Shopifreaks and watch TikTok at the same time from my browser. LOL. I wish they offered this for mobile devices too, so that I can continue viewing TikTok and use other apps in the background.
- New Collections Feature – allows users to organize their favorite videos into custom categories so that it's easier to find and revisit saved content later (similar to YouTube Playlists).
Given that TikTok's floating video player is exclusive to Google Chrome, it makes me wonder why YouTube doesn't offer similar functionality. Should we expect that soon?
So what's this new desktop experience all about?
Matene Toure of ZDNet wrote that the desktop updates “suggest that the app is vying to encroach on Twitch and YouTube's dominance in the game streaming market.”
However, might this also have to do with the pending TikTok ban? We're already more than halfway through the 75 day lifeline that Trump gave the app, but it doesn't seem that TikTok is any closer to a sale then when Biden was still in office. If inevitably, a deal can't be reached to sell 50% of TikTok US to an American company, and the app gets removed again from Google Play and Apple App Store, a refreshed desktop version (which also works via mobile web browser) could keep TikTok alive with its US viewers.