Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok app has launched a new social app Feiliao/Flipchat on Monday that combines instant message and forum functionalities on iOS and Android. Flipchat is a hybrid that combines instant messaging with those of interest-based forums.
Personal interests and hobbies are at the heart of ByteDance’s new application, which encourages users to create forums and groups around them – not at all different from how Reddit works.
The app primarily has two kinds of chat groups: open groups and regular groups. Open groups closely resemble forums on Baidu Tieba, where all posts are visible to all users and where there is no limit to the number of members. The biggest chat group on the app contains around 3,500 people and appears to be a group for testing features, not posting actual content. Regular groups are similar to private chat groups and have a limit of 100 users per group.
Feiliao is an open social media product. We hope this application can connect people who have the same interests to make the lives of others more diverse and interesting – ByteDance official statement.
While Feiliao is more interested in encouraging users to create forums or groups that suit their interests and hobbies, in the description, ByteDance explains that this application has a chat and video call feature.
Although Feiliao was not a competitor of WeChat, the scent of business competition between ByteDance and Tencent continued to heat up.
