LinkedIn is doing its absolute best to become a little more like buzzier social media sites.
And now it looks like TikTok is doing the opposite.
The ByteDance-owned platform has introduced a “profie views” feature that lets people see which users visited their profiles within the last 30 days.
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This feature was first spotted in TikTok’s code back in January, but according to TechCrunch appears to have started rolling out—whether in a test or a full-scale debut—to users over the past week.
Users who have access to profile views will see a small eye-shaped symbol in the upper righthand corner of their own profile. Tapping it will take them into a list of accounts that’ve stopped by their bio, giving them a look at who’s scoping out their content.
TikTok is working on a LinkedIn-like Profile Views feature
The feature will let you view who visited your TikTok profile in the past 30 days.
h/t @adrianokev1 pic.twitter.com/eMnYtgyUq0
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) January 23, 2022
Not everyone will be logged by the feature. It’s only available to users 16 and older, and it’s not an automatic tool: users have to manually opt-in to having their profile-browsing activity appear to others. So unless you actively choose to let users see when you’ve visited their profiles, your presence will remain undetected.
Also, per TechCrunch, only accounts with 5,000 or fewer followers will be able to see profile visit activity (possibly because bigger accounts may simply have too many visitors to track without putting a strain on TikTok’s systems).
Users can also opt in or out of the feature at any time—it’s not a one-and-done deal.
As social media consultant Matt Navarra pointed out, an older version of the TikTok app also had a profile views tool, but it ended up being removed.
Again, it’s not clear if TikTok is formally tossing profile views out to everyone, or if it’s just testing the thing with select users. Either way, though, it seems the platform is trying to find a way to help smaller-following creators find one another.
