Instagram is waxing lyrical about taking on TikTok

June 13, 2019

I mean, it’s been at least a few weeks since Insta copied a feature from another app, so guess what? Instagram is delving into the world of lip-syncing, hoping to one-up the karaoke king of apps, TikTok.

TikTok, the social video app where you can watch people lip-syncing or having dance-offs, has 500 million active users worldwide and is incredibly popular among teenagers. The ability to create amateur music videos is incredibly appealing for young influencers who want to shoot to social stardom. Instagram’s move shows that Facebook, its owner, is determined to reach out to younger audiences in a way that the Facebook app hasn’t.

The latest Instagram feature lets you display lyrics on your Story synced to a soundtrack you add with the Music sticker. To play with the feature, select the Music lens before you shoot your Story or click on the Music sticker after. Choose a song, then you’ll see lyrics pop up which can help you cue the part of the song you wish to play. Afterwards, you can scroll through different animation styles like the traditional karaoke teleprompter, a typewriter effect that only reveals lyrics as they’re sung, and a big and SHOUTY billboard font.

And TikTok wasn’t slow to react. Last week it also pushed out a text feature for overlaying captions to videos. Previously, users could only add text to their videos using third-party apps like Snapchat or Instagram Stories. Some users even opt for the full analog experience of holding up a piece of paper with handwritten captions (we salute you!).

All of these features are about keeping video content on social from going stagnant. The polished, painstakingly perfect Instagram aesthetic is done with. Fans are tired of perfection, which breeds envy and feels fake. The LOLs, OMGs, and the rough edges of real life are becoming the new ‘look’ of social media.

Latest Posts

Design and disability are so often discussed in terms of basic “accommodation” and “access,” yet my visit to the V&A’s Design and Disability exhibition completely shifted that perspective. Rather than framing disability as an issue to be fixed, the exhibition presents it as a culture, a rich set of identities, and a radical design force shaping practice from the 1940s right up to today.

Lurkers are your biggest audience and they’re deciding in silence. They watch in feeds, sanity-check you in comments, communities and reviews, then repeat whatever proof is easiest to quote internally. That’s why social feels harder, it’s no longer a click machine, it’s an answer surface. Ofcom shows AI summaries are now common in search results, and YouTube remains the UK’s biggest social utility by reach and time spent. If your story is inconsistent, your evidence is scattered, or your customer proof is buried, lurkers can’t do the job of trusting you for you.

Pinterest has rolled out a brand-new Media Planner inside its advertising tools, and it’s designed to make planning and managing Pin campaigns a whole lot simpler. In short? It gives you a clearer view of what you’re running, who you’re targeting, and what results you can expect…