TikTok may launch two new apps: TikTok Notes and TikTok Lite

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TikTok may be fighting various policy and licensing fires at the moment, but the company’s product development roadmap continues… including new apps.

First, TikTok Notes. This is the already-rumoured TikTok-branded photo-sharing app that now appears to be readying for launch.

TechCrunch reported that some users have seen pop-up notifications telling them that “TikTok Notes, a new app for photo posts, is coming soon! Your existing and future public TikTok photo posts will be shown on TikTok Notes”.

(The notification includes an option to turn that off.)

“As part of our continued commitment to innovating the TikTok experience, we’re exploring ways to empower our community to create and share their creativity with photos and text in a dedicated space for those formats,” is how TikTok’s spokesperson responded to the report.

The second new TikTok app is even more intriguing. It’s called TikTok Lite, and has launched in Spain and France so far according to The Information.

This is TikTok but with a twist: users earn points for watching videos and doing other activities within the app. Those points can then be redeemed for gift cards or for TikTok’s ‘coins’ currency – the latter can then be spent on tipping creators.

In Spain and France, TikTok Lite is for over-18s only, with an age-verification process the first time a user tries to claim rewards.

While it’s a separate app for now, we can’t help wondering whether – if this rewards system proves popular – the long-term plan might be to incorporate these features into the main TikTok app.

And here’s a thought: how might a similar system work within the TikTok Music streaming app? Although in both cases, there might also be questions too about how a rewards layer might be incorporated into licensing deals with music rightsholders.