This is too good an opportunity for Meta to ignore: On January 19, TikTok, one of the biggest social media competitors, is set to go dark across the United States as the new national security law goes into effect. In the days and weeks leading up to the ban, as millions of Americans struggled to find viable alternatives to TikTok, Meta found ways to promote Instagram and Facebook as the answer. The tech giant is making various design tweaks, launching new features, and running ads that all position its platform—and especially its video product, Reels—as a direct competitor to TikTok. year, but on Friday, Meta showed off a new feature that appears to have been lifted directly from TikTok Shop, TikTok’s successful e-commerce platform. In a promotional video, two shopping creators who work for Meta explain how influencers can now “show more clearly” the products they market on Reels. Instead of putting an Amazon or Walmart link in the comments, they can add a banner that directs viewers to click on an item at the bottom of the video—just like how it works in the TikTok Shop. Some other Meta attempts as shown. Before TikTok stopped working for about 14 hours on Saturday, some people reported that among the last things they saw on the platform were sponsored posts for Instagram. “Unsurprisingly, when TikTok went down tonight, Meta flooded FYP with ads for Instagram,” someone said in a Bluesky post, referring to TikTok’s AI-powered For You Page feed. “In the last hour on TikTok, I saw an ad for instagram,” said another person on Threads. TikTok’s Ad Library, a transparent tool that allows anyone to search for paid campaigns on the platform, shows that Meta opened dozens of sponsored videos on Instagram and Reels in January that were viewed simultaneously by millions of users. But the tool only includes data from a select few countries — mostly in Europe — and doesn’t cover ads that TikTok users in the United States might see. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Facebook, several people reported seeing a different promotion in their news feed last week, encouraging them to connect their TikTok account to their Facebook page. “Build your social presence across apps by sharing your TikTok profile link and number of followers on your Facebook Page,” one version of the message read. screenshot of the banner. “Facebook annoys users by suggesting we add TikTok accounts to our Facebook pages,” joked another. The guide appears to be connected to the Meta feature launched last month that allows users to display their YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram handles and followers. counts on Facebook. However, the reported banner person is now only mentioning the name TikTok. The feature makes it easy for creators on other platforms to find and follow them on Facebook.
