Nobody has covered the interesting angle -- this is the first time I've seen social media companies launch direct competitors, rather than a novel way to capture attention.
Yeah, and even TikTok itself has done this. There was this flash in the pan social media app that was popular for like 2-3 months at some point in the past year (I forget when) called BeReal and TikTok added an exact clone of the functionality.
They've been stealing features from the competition for years. Snapchat was really novel when it came out, then the others created effectively the same UX. Clubhouse was a novel take as well, then Twitter added a clone of it right into the main app.
I can't actually think of the last time one of the existing networks launched a new app to compete rather than just stealing UX features, that is a new one to me for sure!
At least, the first time in a while