TikTok Inc.

08/12/2024 | Press release | Archived content

Share your favorite TikTok moments with Direct Messaging

TikTok is home to entertainment and connection across all corners of the world. Whether you're eagerly scrolling the latest trends on your #ForYou feed, catching up on the #Olympics from your favorite athletes, or searching for your next page-turner on #BookTok, TikTok makes it easy to discover entertaining and relevant content from our global community. And to make connecting over entertainment on TikTok even easier, we're excited to share new ways to create and share engaging content with your friends.

We know our community loves Direct Messages and how easy they make it to share relatable content with friends, discover new videos, and stay on top of the latest trends. To enhance user experience and make connecting with friends even more seamless and enjoyable, we're excited to introduce new updates that elevate DMs, including the highly requested group chat feature, and give you more control over your messaging experience on the platform.

Stickers

On TikTok, creating and sending videos to each other is our love language. We always look for ways to up our game and create real and visually entertaining tools for our community. Creative expression and accessibility are at our core, and we brought that energy to DM features with the introduction of Stickers in DM. Stickers provide fun and creative visual chat options that encourage the community to create and upload their own custom stickers for everyone to use. Learn more about Stickers here.

Group Chat

TikTok inspires self-expression, providing an easy way to share authentic and relatable content. Group Chat harnesses this power, allowing you to create a shared viewing experience with friends, family, and communities. Watch, comment, and react together in real time, making every interaction more dynamic and connected. People can curate dedicated groups with up to 32 people through group chat and easily share their favorite videos.

When developing features, we assess how we can build safety into their design, especially for teens. Group Chat, like Direct Messaging, is not available for those ages 13 to 15. To help older teens 16-17 enjoy the benefits of this feature, we're taking important steps to block communication with strangers. This means:

  • Everyone, including teens, can only be added to a Group Chat by their friends (people they follow who also follow them).
  • If a teen is sent a link to join a group conversation, they will not be able to join unless the group includes at least one mutual friend. If they are eligible to join, they will be required to make a proactive decision to join.
  • When a teen creates a group conversation, by default we will require them to review and approve new joiners.

In addition, to help everyone feel comfortable with who they are messaging, people will be able to use muting and blocking tools and also report messages or the entire chat if they are concerned content violates our Community Guidelines. We also limit the number of groups someone can create and the number of times a message can be forwarded. Learn more about Group Chats here.

Creative expression is truly limitless on TikTok. We're always looking for new ways to enrich the TikTok experience and bring that mantra to life for our global community, and we will continue to introduce features that help you discover shared entertainment through authentic connections.

Discover TikTok and join our community by simply downloading the app for free via the Apple App Store, Google Play or Amazon.