TikTok is testing the ecommerce waters.
The shortform video app has launched a new feature called Small Gestures, which allows users to send one another free gifts from companies that have partnered with TikTok. Small Gestures are free for users to send, but there is a limit: each person can only send three gifts total.
“During this continued period of social distancing, finding ways to connect with loved ones near and far is becoming increasingly hard to do,” the company wrote in a post about the feature. “In an effort to give back and spark joy throughout the TikTok community and beyond, we’ve come together with our brand partners to launch Small Gestures.”
The feature lets TikTokers select gifts from brands like Adobe, DoorDash, and Talkspace to send to fellow users. Gifts range from extended free trial periods to coupons for a specific amount off an order to free copies of video games. (You can see all the gifts on offer below.)
To send a Small Gesture, a TikTok user has to look up ‘Small Gestures’ in their Discover Page. Doing so will bring up usual search results, but also pop up a new purple banner. Users can click through the banner to see all the offers currently available for gifting.
While Small Gestures is being pitched as a temporary feature meant to drive goodwill during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is one curious thing about that search results banner: alongside the words ‘Small Gestures’ is a logo for ‘TikTok Rewards,’ a program the app launched in July of last year.
TikTok Rewards is a referral program that assigns users a code, and awards them points if a new user joins with that code. It’s not exactly clear how many points users get for referrals, but some users have reported getting 500 points per signup. These points can then be redeemed for gift cards to popular stores; for example, it’s 1,000 points for a $5 Uber
gift card, 2,000 points for a $10 Starbucks gift card, and 3,000 points for a $15 AMC Theaters card.The connection between Small Gestures and TikTok Rewards isn’t exactly clear. However, Chinese sister app Douyin has set up a reward system for users who get folks to buy a product or sign up for a trial service from one of TikTok’s brand partners. This practice–called “social shopping”–is huge on Douyin and other Asian apps, and helped drive a significant chunk of the $122.9 million the app brought in last year (compared to TikTok’s $54 million).
However TikTok plans to use the data gathered from Small Gestures, it is undoubtedly probing the vast realm of ecommerce. Currently, the majority of TikTok’s revenue comes from ad sales and brand partnerships, through which companies can reportedly do things like pay $150,000 to promote a hashtag and $50,000 to place an autoplay ad users will see when they log in. But, as we’ve noted before, despite companies like Chipotle driving billions of views by hooking up with TikTok, other marketers may still be leery because TikTok apparently doesn’t offer robust campaign performance metrics. Perhaps Small Gestures could be helpful there, too, as brands will see exactly how many people are joining offers from TikTok.
Here, courtesy of TikTok’s post, are all the Small Gestures gifts currently available:
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