TikTok Is Increasing The Caption Character Limit To 300, And Testing A New Tip Feature For Users To Support Their Favorite Creators With

TikTok's getting in a couple of new creator oriented features into the mix, adding a Tips feature to its videos and increasing the character limit of the caption box to three hundred.

TikToks may have started out as nothing much more complicated than fun dance trends or kids lip syncing to their favorite songs, but we've gone much much further than that. Now, they're used as hubs for all kinds of multifaceted topics and ideas, with the trending page displaying so many different popular subjects. Sure, dancing videos are still popular but short form comedy's found it's own audience on the platform too. Yes, lip syncing is nice, but have you seen all those TikToks about beekeepers that keep showing up? There are users popular for explaining basic finance to individuals better than their schools ever did, and there are people showing off intricate arts and crafts. It really is such a varied platform now, and that sort of variety calls for more expression being allowed, not less.

Therefore, TikTok's decision to increase the caption box's character count to 300 is one that I can one hundred percent get behind, which was first spotted by @jerabean. It's a a very minor change, but one that clearly displays TikTok as a platform growing with its userbase and community, as opposed to against it. It's a small change, but it clearly sends the message that users have been seen expressing themselves more, and the platform wants to make sure that they're heard out and seen even better for what they do. Captions immediately set the tone for what it is that a user's doing, and shorter ones worked fine for comedy videos or dances back in the day. However, things are more complex now and maybe captions should reflect that.


The other update we've got today involves these very creators being provided a new line of monetization from which they can profit. While not officially added to TikTok's user interface, some users (including @jera.bean on TikTok) have began to report the presence of a new Tip option being attached to TikToks. The obvious reason being that users can now go ahead and directly support their favorite creators by providing them with a direct line of income, even if it comes in short bursts and isn't perhaps the most reliable. Either way, this is still very much a win for the creator base as a whole, who have rather impressively made out entire careers from the platform. Naturally, such users are lucrative for TikTok itself, and therefore should be given more incentive to stay. Thus, features like this end up happening.


Read next: A Study Reveals That TikTok Creators With The Largest Audiences May Not Be The Best For Branded Content
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