I Tried TikTok’s New Instagram Competitor: Here’s Why It’s Painfully Mediocre
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, quietly launched Whee, a competitor to Instagram, in June 2024. Despite its promising features, the app is currently underwhelming. Here’s why.
What Is Whee?
Remember when Meta launched Instagram Stories and Reels, attempting to compete with TikTok and Snapchat? Well, ByteDance decided to follow in Meta’s footsteps and launched an Instagram-like app, Whee, allowing users to share images with their closest friends.
This isn’t a first though—TikTok has tried competing with Instagram before. In 2020, ByteDance launched Lemon8, a photo and video-sharing platform. On the 17th of April 2024, TikTok also began rolling out TikTok Notes in Australia and Canada. According to a post on X, TikTok Notes is supposed to be “a dedicated space for photo and text content”.
It’s unclear how TikTok plans on keeping Whee and TikTok Notes distinct, since both allow users to share images with their followers. Whee is available on the App Store and Google Play Store, and has already racked up over a thousand downloads. While the app is currently available in a few countries only, I downloaded the app and tested it out extensively.
Why Whee Is Promising
Think of Whee as a more personal version of Instagram. Unlike Instagram and most other social networking apps, Whee doesn’t offer the option to have a public account. Once you log into the app, your account will automatically be set to private, and you can only view posts your friends share.
Ultimately, this means that you can’t view someone’s posts unless they accept your follow request. So, while this does imply that viewing an influencer or celebrity’s posts on Whee is out of the question, I do think we have enough platforms for this.
Whee is a platform made for you to share pictures with only your closest friends and family. You have the option to share posts with your friends on Whee or set them to “Only you.”
One feature I loved about Whee is how it displays all your posts. Unlike other social networking apps, Whee displays all your images in a grid form, grouped by months. This layout does seem quite similar to Snapchat’s Gallery. For instance, as shown in the image below, everything I’ve posted in the month of June is shown under the June category.
On the homepage, you’ll be able to see three different tabs—messages, camera, and feed. At first glance, I thought the app’s interface was incredibly similar to BeReal (especially the camera).
In the Whee app, you can choose from 0.5x, 1x, 2x, and 3x zoom options. By swiping, you can select filters including Emotive, Light Retro, CCD Style, Smoky, Lo-fi, Camping, and Vintage. There’s also a Beauty filter option available.
When I tap an image on my profile, I can see any comments my friends have left on my posts and share it to other platforms.