(New York) The social network TikTok on Monday launched a new tool that allows you to post messages containing only text, a novelty for this platform dedicated so far to the image, which allows it to compete directly with Twitter.

This new feature allows users “to share their stories, poems, [song] lyrics and other written content, giving creators another way to express themselves,” the Chinese group’s subsidiary ByteDance said in a statement.

TikTok offers users who create written content to add audio, give location, allow comments or other users to use the “Duets” mode, which allows you to post your own message alongside that of another creator.

Built on short-form videos, which made its popularity, TikTok is looking to expand its offering.

In particular, it gradually increased the maximum length of its videos from 15 seconds at its launch in 2017 to 10 minutes, to compete with one of the big rivals, YouTube, which itself created the short formats YouTube Shorts, inspired by TikTok.

This new text-only format is one more alternative to the king of text-centric social networks, Twitter, renamed X on Monday, whose hegemony is increasingly contested.

In addition to newcomers Mastodon, Bluesky, T2 or Substack Notes, the giant Meta launched Threads in early July, which now has 117 million users, according to the specialist firm Quiver Quantitative.

Like Meta, TikTok benefits from its size, with around 1.4 billion monthly active users, according to the specialized site Business of Apps.

But unlike Facebook’s parent company, it chose to integrate a new text-only feature into its app rather than launch a separate product, as Meta did with Threads.