In the world of mobile apps, it’s normal for companies to “inspire” each other, especially when a particular service is extremely popular. ByteDance’s TikTok already enjoys immense popularity on its own. However, the company aimed to challenge Instagram’s dominance in social photo-sharing with TikTok Notes. In a new development, ByteDance is shutting down TikTok Notes, although it still maintains a similar alternative.
ByteDance is shutting down TikTok Notes, its alternative to Instagram
With TikTok Notes, ByteDance sought to use the popularity of the “TikTok” brand to boost the success of an alternative to Instagram. Notes had a UI and options similar to those of the Meta social network. However, it seems things didn’t turn out as the company intended.
ByteDance did not officially reveal the reason behind shutting down TikTok Notes. Anyway, it’s not hard to imagine that public adoption wasn’t as big as expected. Perhaps the company projected a rapid adoption rate among TikTok users. Basically, they were looking for many TikTok users with Instagram accounts to replace Meta’s social network with their own.
Although ByteDance is shutting down TikTok Notes, the company is maintaining—and promoting—Lemon8, an app with a similar goal. It was already a bit weird that ByteDance would maintain two such similar apps. Perhaps “Notes,” launched last year in a few countries, was an experiment to see if adding the “TikTok” name would help grow the service’s popularity.
Users being prompted to move to Lemon8
Currently, the TikTok team is directing Notes users to Lemon8. “We’re excited to bring the feedback from TikTok Notes to Lemon8 as we continue building a dedicated space for our community to share and experience photo content, designed to complement and enhance the TikTok experience,” said a company spokesperson.
So, it doesn’t look like ByteDance is going to stop trying to take a slice of the pie from Instagram. In fact, the company seems determined to push Lemon8 as its true alternative to Meta’s social platform. By December 2024, Lemon8 had around 12.5 million monthly active users.
“Lemon8 is a lifestyle app that offers a similar experience to TikTok Notes” but with “even more features,” the company claims. They also say that shutting down TikTok Notes “was not done lightly.” However, users of the discontinued app will be able to download and save their data to set up a Lemon8 account.
It’s noteworthy that ByteDance appears to have considered Lemon8 as a potential emergency replacement for TikTok in the US—in case its situation in the country becomes complicated. Last year, the firm introduced more photo-sharing tools between the two platforms. It also enabled logging into Lemon8 with a TikTok account.
