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Why Are Social Media Platforms Mirroring Eachother?

Why Are Social Media Platforms Mirroring Eachother?

Charlotte Bolton |

It is quite normal to see big apps, video games and social media platforms take inspiration from each other, regularly taking ideas and adapting them into their content to suit their brand's style whilst still keeping the idea original. However, recently within the last 5 years especially, we have begun to notice that many social media platforms are starting to take ideas and just put them straight onto their channels and taking this copying to the extreme. It comes after discovering TikTok is releasing its own video and photo platform similar to Instagram and Facebook called TikTok Notes.

So let’s have a look at what these platforms are copying from each other and more importantly… why?

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What are the most common social media features copied?

Although there are a lot of features of social media copied from different platforms, through research we discovered the top 3 most popular features copied are Stories, Video Shorts and Tweets.

Stories – Originating from Snapchat, a place to post photos and video content for people to see in real time for a limited 24 hours.

Video Shorts – Originating on TikTok, short for video of 15-second – 1-minute videos people can watch which content is targeted to interest and entertain.

Tweets – Originating from Twitter, short paragraphs or sentences containing information, links, or photos.

 

So now we are aware of the top 3 most copied features, let’s look at which social media platforms are doing it and how often this copying has happened over the last 20 years:

  • 2004 – Facebook was created.
  • 2005 – YouTube was created.
  • 2006 – Twitter was created.
  • 2010 – Instagram app was created.
  • 2011 – Snapchat was created.
  • 2013 – Snapchat introduced Snapchat stories.
  • 2014 – Musical.ly was created.
  • 2016 – Instagram launched Instagram Stories.
  • 2017 – Facebook Stories were launched.
  • 2018 – Musical.ly merged into a brand new app, TikTok.
  • 2020 – BeReal was created.
  • 2020 – Instagram introduced Reels.
  • 2020 – Snapchat released Spotlight.
  • 2021 – YouTube created Shorts.
  • 2022 – Instagram created Instagram Candid, similar to BeReal.
  • 2022 – TikTok created TikTok Now, similar to BeReal.
  • 2022 – TikTok introduced TikTok Stories.
  • 2023 – Twitter changed its branding and name to X.
  • 2023 – Instagram created Instagram Threads.
  • 2024 – TikTok Notes were announced.

 

Why do social media platforms copy each other?

It’s important to understand why this copying method seems to have been adopted, as there may be some creditable reasoning as to why this is happening. First of all, we noticed that it isn’t just 2 platforms copying each other forward and backward, it’s a selection. Around 6 platforms are copying each other’s features, with some of these belonging to the same business.

It seems to have started more after TikTok was created, and its clear success was made very well known.

When it comes to gaining interest and attraction to something new, people like when new platforms have features and aspects that they have previous knowledge of and understand. Therefore, if companies know features like stories are popular, adding these to their new platforms is a great way to create attraction. Subconsciously, we follow expectations too, so when we see a new platform we almost expect it to have some form of popular feature we have experienced before, if a platform or app is completely new we have a better chance of getting bored or becoming uninterested.

Meta does own many big companies like Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, but, surprisingly, they don’t attempt to keep their brands original instead of copying other platforms and their selves.

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Conclusion

Will you be checking out TikTok Notes when it's released? We aren’t completely sure what to expect from this new platform, however, we are slightly disappointed that TikTok has decided to copy Instagram. They were doing well with keeping original which may have led to their incredible success with TikTok especially. Now we are worried they have begun to act like the other platforms when it comes to originality.

 

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