TikTok rolls out Now, a BeReal-like feature, to its app in the US, with daily prompts to capture a 10-second video or a photo using both front and back cameras
meet TikTok Now Sumit Adhikari / Android Headlines : TikTok ‘Now’ Debuts As The Latest BeReal Clone Vish Gain / Silicon Republic : TikTok is now trying to BeReal with a new feature Andrew Hutchinson / Social Media Today : TikTok Copies BeReal with New ‘TikTok Now’ Feature Tweets: Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : TikTok is launching a BeReal feature https://newsroom.tiktok.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... @tiktokcomms : TikTok Now brings the authenticity of TikTok to a whole new creative experience built to connect. Learn more: https://t.co/OtCaA0O6JF Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : You aren't a major social media app until you've blatantly ripped off a feature from an up & coming competitor then posted a breathlessly earnest post about your innovative new feature. https://techcrunch.com/... Tom Dotan / @cityofthetown : With this and that corn kid video, GenZ has had a bad month of looking pretty old. https://twitter.com/... Brian Roemmele / @brianroemmele : The additional hook that keeps on hooking. Let's give just a little more of our time to TikTok, it's just 10-seconds you can make such a powerful point in 10-seconds. Of course it will take about an additional hour for most to plan it out and of course use TikTok for ideas. https://twitter.com/... @biblegirl222 : the phenom of social platforms looking at each other's test answers rather than focusing on the sustainability of their own apps to keep users happy and on board is mind numbing https://twitter.com/... Amanda Silberling / @asilbwrites : EVERY SOCIAL MEDIA APP IS JUST THE SAME APP https://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
TikTok Now lands mid-way through a fast-moving clone wave: weeks earlier, Instagram shipped Dual to mimic BeReal's front-and-back camera capture, and days ago began internally testing Candid Challenges, its own timed daily-photo prompt. With both giants now attacking BeReal's format simultaneously, the question is whether the startup's non-addictive-by-design appeal survives being absorbed into feeds built for engagement.
The arc closes quickly in the corpus: less than a year after launch, TikTok would shut TikTok Now down without giving a reason, with user estimates suggesting BeReal itself faded in 2023 — evidence that the format resisted replication even by the platform that popularized short video.
First-order effects
- BeReal now competes directly inside TikTok's US app, losing the distribution advantage that let a standalone app define the daily-prompt format.
- US TikTok users gain a second daily-capture habit layered onto an app they already open, removing the need to install BeReal at all.
Second-order effects
- Instagram's parallel moves — Dual and Candid Challenges — turn the format into a three-way race among TikTok, Meta, and BeReal, pressuring BeReal to differentiate on its anti-addiction positioning rather than its capture mechanics.
- Attention on BeReal splits across three imitators, diluting the network effects a small startup depends on to keep its user base engaged.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, viral social formats get absorbed by incumbents before standalone apps can monetize — though the corpus shows the reverse risk too: TikTok's own clone was retired within months while BeReal faded anyway, suggesting the format itself, not any single owner, was the fragile part.
The trend: Social platforms are locked in a mutual feature-cloning cycle — Reels copied TikTok, TikTok copied BeReal, Instagram copied both — where formats migrate between apps faster than their originators can build durable businesses.