How Standalone Apps Have Become The Secret Weapon for Social Media Platforms
Lemon8 / CapCut / Shuffles
Standalone apps are becoming the secret weapon for social media platforms.
Recently, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, launched the Lemon8 App, a lifestyle community app that combines the features of Pinterest and Instagram in the US and UK. It has become one of the hottest apps, appearing in the top 10 downloaded apps and attracting an influx of creators through paid and organic initiatives. Another app owned by ByteDance, CapCut, has surpassed 200 million monthly active users. This all-in-one video editing app has become a go-to tool for creators who want to edit and produce professional-looking videos using templates for distribution on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Meanwhile, Pinterest has heavily promoted Shuffles, its collage maker app, this year. It recently expanded it to nine new countries and added new shopping features. While these apps may never be as popular as their parent company's flagship products, they help support their overall initiatives.
ByteDance's Lemon8 provides a more direct competitor to Instagram by offering a new space for creators who focus on photo content but want the benefits of a TikTok-like algorithm that can accelerate audience growth. Its emphasis on inspirational and informative content across categories like fashion, beauty, food, wellness, travel, and home is positioning it as a place for social commerce, which is another focus for ByteDance.
Through CapCut, ByteDance pushes more content to TikTok by empowering creators with easy-to-use tools, tutorials, and templates to create engaging videos for TikTok, especially videos around trending topics that can rack up millions and millions of views.
As for Pinterest, Shuffles is a feeder system for bringing even more of Gen Z, one of the fastest-growing demographics on Pinterest, to Pinterest properties. Collage-making apps have become quite popular with this demographic, who crave more ways to express themselves in creative ways. With the shopping integration, Pinterest also supports its mission to make all of Pinterest shoppable.
Although these apps may never achieve the same level of popularity as their parent company's flagship products, they support their parent companies' initiatives and signal a broader strategy of social media platforms building ecosystems of complementary apps.
With Meta reportedly launching a decentralized Twitter alternative that is integrated with Instagram in the future, we could possibly be seeing another example of this, as that platform can help Meta grow its advertising business, leverage emerging technologies, and boost user engagement — all of which are some of its priorities.
