When TikTok went off the air (to use a very old-fashioned phrase), there was a scramble to find an alternative to its shortform video feed — and a similar scramble by various social networks to provide that alternative. (In fact, while I was writing this, Tumblr launched its new Tumblr TV feature.) The question is: how successful are they?
Most certainly operate like TikTok. You scroll up to see the next short video, and you can like videos, follow their creators, or leave a comment. There are sometimes minor differences across services — for example, while most automatically repeat a video until you swipe away, X’s video feed automatically moves to the next one. But because most of these new and new-ish services are trying so hard to be the next TikTok, most aren’t offering anything innovative to make them stand apart.
On the other hand, the types of videos you’ll find on each service will vary, at least somewhat. If you have a history with a service — for example, if you’ve been on Facebook or Instagram for a while — that may be used to determine which videos you see.
What follows is what I found when I tried out the TikTok-ish options included with some well-known social networks and a few of the lesser known but more interesting services that have begun popping up.
Whether any of them will actually thrive as a true TikTok alternative is hard to say. If TikTok does finally disappear, I suspect we will find ourselves in the same pattern as that which has followed Twitter / X’s slow plunge, in which a scattering of creators and followers flock to whatever service they trust the most, without any one platform taking the absolute lead. The one thing that’s certain is there are plenty of platforms eager to take users in.
Google’s premier video site introduced its Shorts feature in September 2020. Originally limited to 60 seconds, the maximum time allowed per video was increased to up to three minutes in October 2024. In fact, any video uploaded to YouTube that’s under three minutes is now automatically categorized as a short.
On the mobile app, Shorts are easily accessible via an icon at the bottom of the screen.
Like all of these apps, you watch Shorts in an endless feed, scrolling up to find the next one; you can like or dislike a video, comment on it, share it, and subscribe to the creator’s channel. If you pause while watching a short, icons that appear at the top of the video allow you to also access live videos or find a current trend.
I’ve been on YouTube for years now, so while most Shorts reflect some of my tastes, there isn’t much variety. The app sent me a fairly narrow amount of content, only a couple of which were from original creators; the others were all film and TV clips. (Although, since I’ve always been a movie buff, that may simply be the algorithm responding to my history.) Meanwhile, I was delivered a sponsored video about every four or five swipes.
Facebook’s approach to making a TikTok competitor is a bit confusing. On one hand, there’s Reels, its shortform video format. On the other, there’s Videos, its longform video format. And in the middle, there’s the video feed you actually end up accessing on mobile: sometimes it’s labeled as Reels, sometimes as Videos. Facebook spokesperson Grace Sellick told us that we’ll “start to see increasingly more Videos next to Reels, and vice versa.” In other words, they’re increasingly just the same bucket of videos under different names.
You access them on the web by using either the Videos or the Reels links in the left-hand column or by selecting the Video link at the top of the mobile app. And no, they are not the same thing as Stories, which are the short videos in the gallery at the top of your page; those are only from your contacts and only stay up for 24 hours.
The videos I scrolled through on my Android phone featured a couple of my favorite creators, clips from TV series, and a couple of recipes — in other words, they were obviously geared toward my past Facebook history, but I didn’t feel they were as varied as they could have been. I got a sponsored video every third or fourth swipe.
The Instagram Reels feature was introduced to the US in August 2020, and while it may be owned by the same company that owns Facebook, the Reels here are better organized and easier to find. You access them on mobile by simply tapping the Reels icon at the bottom of the screen.
There are some interesting differences here. For example, while most apps let you tap to pause a video, on Instagram, you tap to mute and tap again to unmute. The only way to pause a video is to tap and hold, but as soon as you lift your finger, the video unpauses — which is pretty inconvenient.
The interface is as similar to TikTok’s as possible: icons on the lower-right side of the screen let you like, comment, share, or access the audio; you can tap on a creator’s name to see what else they have uploaded. There are translations and closed captions available by tapping the three dots near the bottom right; this also lets you tell the algorithm that you’re interested or not interested in that feed.
The content I swiped through was fairly varied, including cute animals, political content, and interesting music. I got sponsored videos every five or so swipes. And when I brought up comments, they included a notice stating, “This reel is shared publicly to Facebook. Your interactions can also appear publicly there along with your Instagram profile.” (If you don’t want your videos shared to Facebook, you can adjust that in Settings.)
First, a word of advice: if you’re looking to find out how to access videos on X, don’t do a Google search on “X videos.” Just don’t.
Okay, this is where we are now: on January 19th, X announced it was pushing through a new video tab; as of January 22nd, the tab had appeared on my rather old Phone 11 but not on my Android phone. So that is what I used to access it.
I will admit that I never watched any coverage of the inauguration, but despite that, the first video that appeared when I hit the Video tab button on X was Elon Musk’s speech at President Donald Trump’s inauguration (minus the problematic gesture). When I went out of the app and back in again, I got another post from Musk’s account, this time showing a video of Ronald Reagan. (Since I’m old enough to have been around during his administration, I swiped through that one pretty quickly.) I left the app and returned again; this time, I got a Tesla engineer explaining the mechanics of Musk’s gesture. (In later visits, these initial visits to Musk’s account weren’t repeated.)
The videos that followed Musk’s were, on the other hand, more varied in opinion, although they were all political in nature. I got ads every three or so videos (including one on Scientology). The default seems to be to let videos auto-advance, so once they run, they automatically move on to the next. However, you can disable that and have them repeat until you swipe. As with the other platforms, I could share, save, and comment on videos, change the speed, and send videos to my Mac or upload them. I could also like (but not dislike) them.
According to the X help files, premium subscribers can upload videos up to four hours in length; non-subscribers can upload videos up to 140 seconds long.
Bluesky has recently been touted as a non-corporate alternative to some of the other social media platforms, so it was not surprising that it would add a video feed as well. Currently, its videos are limited to 60 seconds.
The video feed can be found by going to the hash mark at the top-right corner of your mobile app and selecting Video under My Feeds. If you want more immediate access, you can pin it to your top tabs by tapping on the pin icon in the top right of the Video feed.
Unlike the other TikTok alternatives, when you go to Video on Bluesky, you don’t immediately start the feed. Instead, you are brought to a page with thumbnails of various videos, where you can pick one. The video will start to run, and you can then scroll through short videos as with any other video app.
I got a fairly interesting variety of videos, including an old Star Trek episode, some cat videos, some political videos, and a classical music selection. I did not hit any ads. There were comments, replays, likes, and share icons at the bottom of the page; pause the video by tapping on it. When you hit the three-dot “more” icon, you get basically the same choices as for the text posts, including the option to show more / less content similar to what you’re watching, mute the thread, or block the account.
Snapchat is mostly a friends-and-family video app, but it does have Spotlight, a selection of snaps that have been made public.
Spotlights concentrate on the kind of thing that people take snaps of — DIY demos, cute animals and kids, “funny” videos, etc. As was expected, they are almost all personal or quickly created videos (rather than TV clips, videos of political figures, or professionally edited shorts). No ads popped up; as with the other services, I could follow, like, and promote a video. I could also block the creator or let the app know if I didn’t like a particular video. While most snaps are said to be limited to 60 seconds, I saw several videos that were more than two minutes in length.
If you’re a Snapchat user and want to explore some of the snaps outside of your friend group or prefer nonprofessional videos to the more polished versions, Spotlight is a fun place to visit.
Owner: Xingyin Information Technology
When TikTok temporarily shut down, instead of going to one of the US-based services listed above, a lot of TikTok refugees (perhaps in a protest move) went instead to another Chinese-based service called 小红书, or Xiaohongshu, but known in the US as RedNote. It’s an interesting place to visit.
One of the first videos I found was a user carefully explaining some of the limits of the service: no politics, no discussion of LGBTQ+ issues. (Looking to check this, I found a long list of community rules, which, when translated by Google, prohibit things like “attacking and defaming party and state leaders” and “content that shows or implies sexual behavior.”) On the other hand, I found another post that purported to teach English speakers how to say “Shut the fuck up,” in Chinese. I found live videos of workers in the kitchen of a restaurant (which could become something to watch until the next season of The Bear comes out), cat videos, and a video of a recipe for apple ginger tea to ease menstrual pain.
The interface is fairly easy to understand, even for English speakers. You can like or favorite a video on the bottom, and comments not in English have the option to be translated. There are also live videos that let you “Gift” the creators. (At one point, language-learning app Duolingo claimed a 216 percent increase in Mandarin learners from the US as a result of TikTok fans experimenting with RedNote.)
I doubt that RedNote will become a substitute for TikTok, or any other English-language social network — and it may be subject to the same ban as TikTok. Still, it was fun to experience an unfamiliar platform.
As we speak, Tumblr is adding its service to the melee. Tumblr TV was originally created to exhibit GIFs, but it has now added videos to the mix, an ability that just came out of beta.
New Tumblr users will see a tab for Tumblr TV at the top menu of the app; otherwise, existing users will need to go to Tab Options to add it. Once tapped, the Tumblr TV tab sends you to a page where you can choose from categories like Sport, TV, Fashion, Gaming, and Bollywood. There’s also a Recommended section at the top.
Unfortunately, the “Recommend” videos I got had very little to do with anything I’ve ever watched on Tumblr, and although a normal Tumblr video can be up to 10 minutes long, these seemed to top out at 30 seconds. In addition, the fact that this is still mainly a GIF feed can result in frustration, especially when you go to a category such as “Music & Theater” and find that most of what you’re coming across lacks audio. However, it’s early days yet for the service, so perhaps this will improve.
There are other less-well-known apps that offer TikTok-like scrolling videos — some of which are still in development. Clapper, for example, advertises that it has a “17+ audience policy,” while a series of introductory videos touts some of its differences from TikTok, including the freedom to smoke or drink on camera. (“But best of all, you will never have to say the word ‘unalive’ again.”) Triller has a similar interface but is mostly about music videos. Fediverse enthusiasts can look forward to Loops, which is currently in development and is looking for testers.
Whether any of these can attain the momentum of TikTok has yet to be seen. After all, we still don’t know if there will be, or could be, an app that can take the place of what Twitter used to be. We’ll just have to keep checking back — it’s up to the creators and their viewers now.
